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From the
Fine Arts Library
Fogg Art Museum
Harvard University
r
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THE
HISTORY OF MODERN PAINTING
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The History
Modern Painting
BY
RICHARD MUTHER
PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRESLAU
LATE KEEPER OF THE PRINTS AT THE MUNICH PINAKOTHEK
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOLUME TIIKKE
NEW YORK
MACMILLAN AND CO
MDCCUXCVi
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FA 3ZS7. 2.1
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
The translation of this volume
was entrusted to
Mr. Arthur Cecil Hillier;
and the printing to
Messrs, Hazelly Watson y &* Viney^ Ld.
of London and Aylesbury.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION i
BOOK IV
THE PAINTERS OF LIFE
CHAPTER XXXIV
FRANCE
Bastien-Lepage, Lliermitte, Roll, Raffaelli, De Nittis, Ferdinand Heilbuth,
Albert Aublet, Jean B^iraud, Ulysse Butin, £douard Dantan, Henri
Gervex, Duez, Friant, Goeneutte, Dagnan-Bouveret. — The Landscape-
Painters : Seurat, Signac, Anquetin, Angrand, Luden Pissarro, Pointelin,
Jan Monchablon, Montenard, Dauphin, Rosset-Granget, £mile Barau,
Damoye, Boudin, Dumoulin, Lebourg, Victor Binet, R6n6 Billotte. — The
Portrait-Painters: Fantin-Latour, Jacques £mile Blanche, Boldini.—
The Draughtsmen : Ch€ret, Willette, Forain, Paul Renouard, Daniel
Vierge • . . . ii
CHAPTER XXXV
SPAIN
From Goya to Fortuny. — Mariano Fortuny. — Official efiforts for the cultivation
of historical painting. — Influence of Manet inconsiderable. — Even in
their pictures from modem life the Spaniards remain followers of
Fortuny: Francisco Pradilla, Casado, Vera, Manuel Ramirez, Moreno
Carbonero, Ricardo Villodas, Antonio Casanova y Estorach, Benliure y
Gil, Checa, Francisco Amerigo, Viniegra y Lasso, Mas y Fondevilla,
Alcazar Tejedor, Jos6 Villegas, Luis Jimenez, Martin Rico, Zamacois,
Raimundo de Madrazo, Francisco Domingo, Emilio Sala y Frances,
Antonio Fabr6s 68
b
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vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXXVI
ITALY
PAGE
Fortuny's influence on the Italians, especially on the school of Naples. —
Domenico Morelli and his followers : F. P. Michetti, Edoardo Dalbono,
Alceste Campriani, Giacomo di Chirico, Rubens Santoro, Edoardo
ToflFano, Giuseppe de Nigris. — Prominence of the costume-picture. —
Venice : Favretto, Lonza. — Florence: Andreotti, Conti, Gelli, Vinea. — The
peculiar position of Segantini. — Otherwise anecdotic painting still
preponderates.— Chierici, Rotta, Vannuttelli, Monteverde, Tito.— -Reasons
why the further development of modem art was generally completed
not so much on Latin as on Germanic soil 90
CHAPTER XXXVII
ENGLAND
General characteristic of English painting. — The offshoots of Qassicism:
Lord Leighton, Val Prinsep, Poynter, Alma Tadema. — Japanese ten-
dencies : Albert Moore. — ^The animal picture with antique surroundings :
Briton-Riviere. — The old^^nr^ painting remodelled in a naturalistic sense
by George Mason and Frederick Walker. — George H. Boughton, Philip
H. Calderon, Marcus Stone, G. D. Leslie, P. G. Morris, J. R. Reid, Frank
HolL — The portrait-painters: Ouless, J. J. Shannon, James Sant,
Charles W. Furse, Hubert Herkomer. — Landscape-painters.— Zigzag
development of English landscape-painting. — The school of Fontaine-
bleau and French Impressionism rose on the shoulders of Constable
and Turner, whereas England, under the guidance of the Preraphaelites,
deviated in the opposite direction until prompted by France to return
to the old path. — Cecil Lawson, James Clarke Hook, Vicat Cole, Colin
Hunter, John Brett, Inchbold. Leader, Corbett, Ernest Parton, Mark
Fisher, John White, Alfred East, J. Aumonier. — The sea-painters : Henry
Moore, W. L. Wyllie. — The importance of Venice for English painting :
Clara Montalba, Luke Fildes, W. Logsdail, Henry Woods. — French
influences: Dudley Hardy, Stott of Oldham, Stanhope Forbes . .110
CHAPTER XXXVIII
BELGIUM
As David swayed over Belgian painting from 1800 to 1830, and Delaroche
from 1830 to 1850, Courbet swayed over it from 1850 to 1870.— Charles
de Groux, Henri de Braekeleer, Constantin Meunier, Charles Verlat,
Louis Dubois, Jan Stobbaerts, Leopold Speekaert, Alfred Stevens, De
Jongh6, Baugniet, the brothers Verhas, Charles Hermans. — The land-
scape-painters first go upon the lines of the Fontainebleau artists and
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the Impressionists. — Sketch of the history of Belgian landscape-painting.
— ^Van Assche, Verstappeni Marneffe, Lauters, Jacob-Jacobs, Kindermans,
Fourmois, Schampheleer, Roelofs, Lamorini^re, De Knyff. — Hippolyte
Boulenger and the Soci^t6 Libre des Beaux- Arts. — Theodore Baron,
Jacques Rosseels, Joseph Heymans, Coosemans, Asselbergs, Verstraete,
Frans Courtens.— The painters of animals: Verboeckhoven, Alfred
Verwee, Parmentier, De Greef, Leemputten, L6on Massaux, Marie
Collaert — The painters of the sea : Clays, A. Bouvier, Leemans, A.
Baertsoen, Louis Artan. — ^The portrait-painters : £mile Wauters, Li6vin
de Winne, Agneesens, Lambrichs. — General characteristic of Belgian
painting 201
CHAPTER XXXIX
HOLLAND
The difference between Dutch and Belgian painting. — The previous history
of artistic efforts in Holland. — Koekkoek, Van Schendel, David Bles,
Hermann ten Kate, Pienemann, Charles Rochussen, Weissenbruch,
Bosboom, Schelfhout, Taurel, Waldorp, Kuytenbrouwer. — Figure-
painters : Josef Israels, Christoffel Bisschop, Gerk Henkes, Albert
Neuhuys, Adolf Artz, Pieter Oyens. — The landscape-painters : Jongkind,
Jacob and Willem Maris, Anton Mauve, H. W. Mesdag.— Realism and
Sensitivism: Klinkenberg, Gabriel. — ^The younger generation. — Neo-
Impressionism : Isaac Israels and Breitner. — Matthew Maris and
Mysticism. — W. Bauer and Jan Toorop.— Thorn Prikker.—" Expression-
ism : " Jan Veth and Haverman, Karpen and Tholen . .228
CHAPTER XL
DENMARK
The kinship between Danish and Dutch painting. — Previous history of
artistic efforts in Denmark.— Christoph Vilhelm Eckersberg and his
importance.— The Eckersberg school : Rorbye, Bendz, Sonne, Christen
Kobke, Roed, Kilchler, Vilhelm Marstrand.— Italy and the East : J. A.
Krafft, Constantin Hansen, Ernst Meyer, Petzholdt, Niels Simonsen. —
The national movement of the forties brings painting back to native
soil : influence of Hoyen, Julius Exner, Frederik Vermehren, Christen
Dalsgaard. — Their intimacy of feeling in opposition to the traditional
genre painting. — The landscape-painters: Johan Thomas Lundbye,
Carlo Dalgas, Peter Christian Skovgaard, Vilhelm Kyhn, Gotfred
Rump.— 'The marine-painters: Emanuel Larsen, Frederik Sdrensen,
Anton Melbye. — Their importance and technical defects. — Carl Bloch
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sets in the place of this awkward painting which had national inde-
pendence one which was outwardly brilliant but less characteristic.
— Gertner, Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann, Otto Bache, Vilhelm Rosen-
stand, Axel Helsted, Christian Zahrtmann. — After the Paris Exhibition
of 1878 there came into being the young school equipped with rich
technical means of expression and, at the same time, taking up the
Eckersberg tradition of intimate and delicate observation: Peter S.
Kroyer, Laurits Regner Tuxen, August Jerndorfii Viggo Johansen, Carl
Thomsen, H. N. Hansen, Otto Haslund, Irminger, Engelsted, Lauritz
Ring, Erik Henningsen, Fritz Syberg. — Painters of the sea and fishing :
Michael and Anna Ancher, Locher, Thorolf Pedersen. — The landscape-
painters: Viggo Pedersen, Philipsen, Thorwald Niss, Zacho, Gotfred
Christensen, Julius Paulsen. — The "free exhibitors:" Joachim and
Niels Skovgaard, Theodor BindesboU, Agnes Slott-MoUer, Harald Slott-
Moller, J. F. Willumsen, V. Hammershoy, Johan Rohde, G. Seligmann,
Karl Jensen 266
CHAPTER XLI
SWEDEN
Previous history of Swedish art.— The Classicists : Per KraflFt, Frederik
Westin, Elias Martin. — Extension of the range of subject through
Romanticism : Plageman, Blomm6r, Fahlcrantz, Wilhelm Palm, Egron
Lundgren. — Beginnings of a national painting of the life of the people :
Soedermark, Sandberg, Dahlstrom, Per Wickenberg, Karl Wahlbom,
August Lindholm, Amalia Lindegren, Nils Andersson. — The Dasseldor-
fiau period : Karl D'Uucker, Bengt Nordenberg, Wilhelm Wallander,
Anders KoskuU, August Jernberg, Ferdinand Fagerlin.— After the Paris
World Exhibition of 1867, instead of going to Dusseldorf, the Swedes
repair to Paris and Munich. — Period of costume-painting and colouring
after the old masters: Johan KristoflFer Boklund, Johan Frederik
Hoeckert, Marten Eskil Winge, August Malmstrom, Georg von Rosen,
Julius Kronberg, Carl Gustav Hellquist, Gustav Cederstrom, Nils
Forsberg. — ^The landscape-painters : Marcus Larsson, Alfred Wahlberg,
G. Rydberg, Edvard Bergh.— After the Paris Worid Exhibition of 1878
the last transition, which led the young Swedish artists to follow the
lines of Impressionism, took place. — The Parisian Swedes: Hugo
Salmson, August Hagborg, Vilhelm von Gegerfelt, Karl SkSnberg,
Hugo Birger. — Those who returned home became the founders of a new
national Swedish art. — Character of this art compared with the Danish. —
The landscape-painters : Per Eckstrom, Nils Kreuger, Karl Nordstrom,
Prince Eugene, Robert Thegerstrom, Olof Arborelius, Axel Lindmann,
Alfred Thome, John Kindborg, Johan Krouth6n, Adolf Nordling, Johan
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Ericson, Edvard Rosenberg, Erast Lundstrdm. — The painters of animals :
Wennerberg, Brandelius, Georg Arsenius, Bruno Liljefors. — The figure-
painters: Axel Kulle, Alf Wallander, Axel Borg, Johan Tir^n, Allan
Oesterlind, Oscar Bjorck, Carl Larsson, Ernst Josephson, Georg Pauli,
Richard Bergh, Anders Zorn / 337
CHAPTER XLII
NORWAY
Previous history of Norwegian art : J. C. Dahl and his importance ; Fearnley,
Frich.— The Dusscldorf period : Adolf Tidemand, Hans Gude, Vincent
Stoltenbei^-Lerche, Hans Dahl, Carl Hansen, Niels Bj6rnson-M611er,
August Cappelen, Morten-M Oiler, Ludwig Munthe, E. A. Normann,
Knud Bergslien, Nicolai Arbo. — From the middle of the seventies Munich
becomes the high-school of Norwegian art, and from 1880 Paris. —
Norwegians who remained in Germany and Paris: M. Grdnvold, J.
Ekendes, Carl Frithjof-Smith, Grimelund. — Those who return home
become the founders of a national Norwegian art : Otto Sinding, Niels
Gustav Wenzel, Jdrgensen, Kolstoe, Christian Krohg, Christian
Skredsvig, Eilif Peterssen. — The landscape-painters : Johan Theodor
Eckersbeig, Amandus Nilson, Fritz Thaulow, Gerhard Munthe, Dissen,
Skramstadt, Gunnar Berg, Edvard Dircks, Eylof Soot, Carl Uckermann,
Harriet Backer, Kitty Kielland, Hansteen.—Illustratioa : Erik
Werenskiold.— Finnish art : Edelfelt 384
CHAPTER XLIII
RUSSIA
(In collaboration with Alexander Benois, St. Petersburg)
The b^nnings of Russian painting in the eighteenth century: ^evitzky,
Rokotov, Borovikovsky. — The period of Classicism : Egorov, Ugrttmov,
Andreas Ivanov, Theodor Tolstoi, Orest Kiprensky. — The first painters
of soldiers and peasants: Orlovsky, Venezianov. — The historical
painters: BrOlov, Bassin, Schamschin, Kapkov, Flavitzky, Moller,
Hendrik Siemiradzky, Bruni, NeflF. — Realistic reaction: Alexander
Ivanov, Sarjanko. — The genre painters : Sternberg, Stschedrovsky,
Tschemyschev, Morosov, Ivan Sokolov, Trutovsky, Timm, Popov,
Shuravlev, Fedotov. — ^The painters with a complaint against society:
Perov, Pukircv, Korsuchin, Prjanischnikov, Savitzky, Lemoch,
Verestchagin. — ^The landscape-painters : Stschedrin, Lebedev, Vorobiev,
Rabus, Lagorio, Horavsky, Bogoliubov, Mestschersky, Aivasovsky,
TschemezofT, Galaktionov, Schischkin, Baron Klodt, Orlovsky, Fedders.
Volkov, VassiHev, Levitan, Kuindshi, Savrassov, Sudkovsky, Vassnetzov,
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Albert Benois, Svjetoslavsky. — ^The naturalistic figure-picture:
Svertschkov, Peter Sokolov.— The Wanderers: Ivan Kramskoi,
Constantin and Vladimir Makovsky, Tschistjakov, Schwarz, Gay,
Surikov, Elias R6pin 407
CHAPTER XLIV
AMERICA
The previous history of American art. — The first Americans who worked
in England: Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart
Newton, Charles Robert Leslie. — ^The first portrait-painters in America
itself: Gilbert Stuart, Charles Wilson Peale, Joseph Wright, Loring
Charles Elliot. — The grand painting: John Trumbull, Washington
Allston, Emanuel Leutze. — Genre painting : William Sydney Mount —
The landscape-painters: Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, John B.
Bristol, Frederick E. Church, J. F. Kensett, Sanford R. GiflFord, James
Fairman, the Morgans, William Morris Hunt. — The Americans in Paris :
Henry Mosler, Carl Gutherz, Frederick A. Bridgman, Edwin Weeks,
Harry Humphrey Moore, Julius L. Stewart, Charles Sprague Pearce,
William T. Dannat, Alexander Harrison, Walter Gay, Eugene Vail,
Walter MacEwen. — The Americans in Holland : Gari Melchers, George
Hitchcock. — The Americans in London: John Singer Sargent, Henry
Muhrmann. — The Americans in Munich : Carl Marr, Charles Frederick
Ulrich, Robert Koehler, Sion Weuban, Orrin Peck, Hermann Hartwich.
— The Americans at home. — The painters of Negro and Indian life :
Winslow Homer, Alfred Kappes, G. Brush. — The founding of the
Society of American Artists: Walter Shirlaw, George Fuller, George
Inness, Wyatt Eaton, Dwight William Tryon, J. Appleton Brown, the
Morans, L. C. Tififany, John Francis Murphy, Childe Hassam, Julian
Alden Weir, H. W. Ranger, H. S. Bisbing, Charles H. Davis, George
Inness, jfinior, J. G. Brown, J. M. C. Hamilton, Ridgway Knight, Robert
William Vonnoh, Charles Edmund Tarbell. — The influence of Whistler :
Kenyon Cox, W. Thomas Dewing, Julius Rolshoven, William Merrit
Chase 454
CHAPTER XLV
GERMANY
Retrospect of the development of German painting since Menzel and Leibl. —
The landscapists had been the first to make the influence of Fontainebleau
operative : Adolf Lier, Adolf Staebli, Otto Frohlicher, Josef Wenglein,
Louis Neubert, Carl HeflFner. — The Munich Exhibition of 1879 brings
about an acquaintance with Manet and Bastien-Lepage : Max Lieber-
mann. — The other representatives of the new art in Berlin: Franz
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CONTENTS xi
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Skarbioa, Friedrich Stahl, Hans Herrmann, Hugo Vogel, Walter
Leistikow, Reinhold Lepsius, Curt Herrmann, Lesser Ury, Ludwig
Dettmann. — ^Vienna. — Dttsseldorf: Arthur Kampf, Kampffer, Oiaf
Jcmbcrg. — Stuttgart: Otto Reiniger, Robert Haug.— Hamburg : Thomas
Herbst. — Carlsruhe : Gustav SchSnleber, Herrmann Baisch, Friedrich
Kallmorgen, Robert Poetzelberger.— Weimar : Theodor Hagen, Baron
Gieichen-Russwurm, L. Berkemeier, R. Thierbach, P. Baum.— Munich :
Bruno Piglhein, Albert Keller, Baron von Habermann, Count Leopold
Kalckreuth, Gotthard Kuehl, Paul Hocker, H. ZOgel, Victor Weishaupt,
L. Dill, L. Herterich, Waclaw Scymanowski, Hans Olde, A. Lang-
hammer,^Leo Samberger, W. Firle, H. von Bartels, W. Keller-Reutlingen,
and others. — The illustrators : Ren6 Reinicke, H. Schlittgen, Hengeler,
Wahle 494
BOOK V
THE NEW IDEALISTS
CHAPTER XLVI
THE NATURE OF THE NEW IDEALISM
After Naturalism had taught artists to work upon the impressions of external
reality in an independent manner, a transition was made by some who
embodied the impressions of their inward spirit in a free creative
fashion, unborrowed from the old masters 541
CHAPTER XLVn
ENGLAND
From William Blake through David Scott to Rossetti. — Rossetti and the New
Preraphaelites : Edward Burne-Jones, R. Spencer Stanhope, William
Morris, J. M. Strudwick, Henry Holliday, Marie Spartali-Stillman. — W.
B. Richmond. Walter Crane, G. F. Watts 561
CHAPTER XLVin
WHISTLER AND THE SCOTCH PAINTERS
Whistler as the creator of a New Idealism of colour.— Adolphe Monticelli.
— The influence of both upon the Glasgow school. — History of Scotch
painting from 1729: Allan Ramsay, David Allan, Alexander and John
Runciman, William Allan, Henry Raebum, David Wilkie, John and
Thomas Faed, Erskine Nicol, George Harvey, Alexander and Patrick
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Nasmyth, E. Crawford, Horatio Maccullocb, John Phillip, Robert Scott
Lauder, John Pettie, W. Orchardson, William Fettes Douglas, Robert
Macgregor, Peter and Thomas Graham, Hugh Cameron, Denovan
Adam, Robert Macbeth, John MacWhirter, George Reid, George Paul
Chalmers, Hamilton Macallum. — Glasgow brings to perfection what
was begun in Edinburgh : Arthur Melville, John Lavery, James Guthrie,
Geoige Henry, Edward Hornell, Alexander Roche, James Paterson,
Grosvenor Thomas, William Kennedy, Edward A. Walton, David Gauld,
T. Austen Brown, Joseph Crawhall, Macaulay Stevenson, P. Macgregor
Wilson, Coventry, Morton, Alexander Frew, Harry Spence, Harrington
Mann 645
CHAPTER XLIX
FRANCE
Gustave Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes,. Cazin, Madame Cazin, Eugdne
Carri^re, P. A. Besnard, Agache, Aman-Jean, M. Denis, Gandara, Henri
Martin, Louis Picard, Ary Renan, Odilon Redon, Carlos Schwabe. — The
parallel movement in Belgium : F6licien Rops, Femand Khnopff . . 700
CHAPTER L
GERMANY
Arnold Boecklin, Franz Dreber, Hans von Mar6es, Hans Thoma. — The
resuscitation of biblical painting. — Review of previous efforts from the
Nazarenes to Munkacsy, E. von Gebhardt, Menzel, and Liebermann. —
Fritz von Uhde. — Other attempts : W. DQrr, W. Volz. — L. von Hofmann,
Julius Exter, Franz Stuck, Max Klinger 741
Bibliography 803
Index of Artists 831
List of Illustrations 853
ERRATUM.
Pages 228 and 23a For Rochupen read Rochussen.
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INTRODUCTION
" "P) EALISM " having led painting from the past to the
XV present, and "Impressionism" having broken the juris-
diction of the galleries by establishing an independent conception
of colour for a new class of subjects, the flood of modern life,
which had been artificially dammed, began to pour into art in
all its volume. A whole series of new problems emerged, and a
vigorous band of modern spirits were ready to lay hold upon
them and give them artistic shape, each according to his nature,
his ability, and his individual knowledge and power. After
nineteenth-century painting had found its proper field of activity,
they were no longer under the necessity of seeking remote
subjects. The fresh conquest of a personal impression of nature
took the place of that retrospective taste which employed the
ready-made language of form and colour belonging to the old
masters, as a vocabulary for the preparation of fresh works of
art Nature herself had become a gallery of splendid pictures.
Artists were dazzled as if by a new light, overcome as though
by a revelation of tones and strains, from which the painter
was to compose his symphonies. They learnt how to find what
was pictorial and poetic in the narrowest family circle and
amongst the beds of the simplest vegetable garden ; and for
the first time they felt mere wonder in the presence of reality,
the joy of gradual discovery and of a leisurely conquest of
the world.
Of course plein^air painting was, at first, the chief object
of their endeavours. Having painted so long only in brown
tones, the radiant magic world of free and flowing light was
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2 INTRODUCTION
something so ravishingly novel, that for several years all their
efforts were exclusively directed to possessing themselves once
more of the sun, and substituting the clear daylight for the
clare-obscure which had reigned alone, void of atmosphere.
In this sunny brightness, flooded with light and air, they found
a crowd of problems, and turned to the perpetual discovery of
new chords of colour. Sunbeams sparkling as they rippled
through the leaves, and greyish-green meadows flecked with
dust and basking under light, were the first and most simple
themes.
The complete programme, however, did not consist of
painting in bright hues, but, generally speaking, in seizing truth
of colour and altogether renouncing artificial harmony in a
received tone. Thus, after the painting of daylight and sun-
light was learnt, a further claim had still to be asserted : the
ideal of truth in painting had to be made the keynote in every
other task. For in the sun light is no doubt white, but in the
recesses of the forest, in the moonshine, or in a dim place, it
shines and is at the same time charged with colour. Night, or
mist, with its hovering and pervasive secrets, is quite as rich in
beauties as the radiant world of glistening sunshine. After
seeing the summer sun on wood and water, it was a relief for
the eye to behold the subdued, soft, and quiet light of a room.
Upon the older and rougher painting of free light there followed
a preference for dusk, which has a softness more picturesque, a
more tender harmony of colours, and more geniality than the
broad light of day. Artists studied clare-obscure, and sought
for an enhancement of colour in it ; they looked into the veil of
night, and addressed themselves to a painting of darkness such
as could only have proceeded from the plein-air school. For this
darkness of theirs is likewise full of atmosphere, a darkness in
which there is life and breath and palpitation. In earlier days,
when a night was painted, everything was thick and opaque,
c >vered with black verging into yellow; to which latter error
aitists were seduced by the crusts of varnish upon old pictures.
Now they learnt to interpret the mysterious life of the night, and
to render the bluish-grey atmosphere of twilight. Or if figures
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INTRODUCTION 3
were to be painted in a room, artists rendered the circulation of
the air amid groups of people, which Correggio called "the
ambient ** and Velasquez " respiration." And there came also the
study of artificial illumination— of the delicate coloured charm of
motley lanterns, of the flaring gas or lamp-light which streams
through the glass windows of shops, flaring and radiating
through the night and reflected in a blazing glow upon the
faces of men and women. Under these purely pictorial points
of view the gradual widening of the range of subject was
completed.
So long as the acquisition of sunlight was the point in
question, representations from the life of artisans in town and
country stood at the centre itself of artistic efforts, because the
conception and technical methods of the new art could be
tested upon them with peculiar success. And through these
pictures painting came into closer sympathy with the heart-beat
of the age. At an epoch when the labouring man as such,
and the political and social movement in civilization, had become
matters of absorbing interest, the picture of artisans necessarily
claimed an important place in art ; and one of the best sides
of the moral value of modern painting lies in its no longer
holding itself in indifference aloof from these themes. When
the century began. Hector and Agamemnon alone were qualified
for artistic treatment, but in the natural course of development
the disinherited, the weary and heavily-laden likewise acquired
rights of citizenship. In the passage where Vasari speaks of
the Madonnas of Cimabue, comparing them with the older
Byzantine Virgins, he says finely that the Florentine master
brought more " goodness of heart " into painting. And perhaps
the historians of the future will say the same about the art of
the present
The predilection for the disinherited was in the beginning
to such an extent identified with the plain, straightforward
painting of the proletariat that Naturalism could not be con-
ceived at all except in so far as it dealt with poverty : in making
its first great successes it had sought after the miserable and
the outcast, and serious critics recognized its chief importance
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4 INTRODUCTION
in the discovery of the fourth estate. Of course the painting
of paupers, as a sole field of activity for the new art, would
have been an exceedingly one-sided acquisition. It is not
merely the working-man who should be painted, because the age
must strive to compass in a large and full spirit the purport
of its own complicated conditions of life. So there began, in
general, the representation, so long needed, of the man of to-day
and of society agitated, as it is, by the stream of existence. As
Zola wrote in the very beginning of the movement : " Naturalism
does not depend upon the choice of subject. The whole of
society is its domain, from the drawing-room to the drinking-
booth. It is only idiots who would make Naturalism the rhetoric
of the gutter. We claim for ourselves the whole world." Every-
thing is to be painted, forges, railway-stations, machine-rooms, the
workrooms of manual labourers, the glowing ovens of smelting-
works, official f^tes, drawing-roOms, scenes of domestic life, cafh^
storehouses and markets, the races and the Exchange, the clubs
and the watering-places, the expensive restaurants and the dismal
eating-houses for the people, the cabinets particuliers and cJUc des
premikreSy the return from the Bois and the promenades on the
seashore, the banks and the gambling-hells, casinoes, boudoirs,
studios, and sleeping-cars, overcoats, eyeglasses, and red dress-
coats, balls, soir^es^ sport, Monte Carlo and Trouville, the
lecture-rooms of universities and the fascination of the crowded
streets in the evening, the whole of humanity in all classes of
society and following every occupation, at home and in the
hospitals, at the theatre, upon the squares, in poverty-stricken
slums and upon the broad boulevards lit with electric light.
Thus the new art flung aside the blouse, and soon displayed
itself in the most various costumes, down to the frock-coat and
the smoking-jacket. The rude and remorseless traits which it
had at first, and which found expression in numbers of peasant,
artisan, and hospital pictures, were subdued and softened until
they even became idyllic. Moreover the scale of painting over
life-size, favoured in the early years of the movement, could be
abandoned, since it arose essentially from competition with the
works of the historical school. So long as those huge pictures
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INTRODUCTION 5
covered the walls at exhibitions, artists who obeyed a new ten-
dency were forced from the beginning — if they wished to
prevail — to produce pictures of the same size. But since his-
torical painting was finally dead and buried, there was no need
to set up such a standard any longer, and a transition could be
made to a smaller scale, better fitted for works of an intimate
character. The dazzling tones in which the Impressionists
revelled were replaced by those which were dim and soft, energy
and force by subdued and tender treatment, largeness of size
by a scale which was small and intimate.
That was more or less the course of evolution run through
in all European countries in a similar way between the years
1875 and 18S5. Nor was it possible to talk of "imitation of the
French." For "resemblance, and even uniformity of style and
taste, is not necessarily the same thing as subserviency. In
every age certain tendencies and forms of representation, like
germs in the air, may be found in quarters divided from each
other by space or national sentiment ; they are lit upon by
more than one person, and arise without outward communication,
just as discoveries in science and inventions in mechanics are
often independently made by several persons. Every age leaves
its successor a heritage of latent f>owers, forms in need of
development, and disturbing questions. Thus the dissimilarity
of artists belonging to different generations, though natives of
the same place and closely related, is materially greater than
the distinction between contemporaries belonging to different
places and completely unknown to each other. As soon as
they have found their feet, the work of pupils has a very different
appearance from that of the master under whose roof they have
worked for years together ; yet masters of the same period, who
have never heard of each other and are of distinct nationalities,
are often so much alike that they could be taken one for the
other." These words from Justi's Velasquez are sufficient to in-
validate the patriotic fears which inferred a renunciation of the
principle of nationality, and the intrusion of a nugatory VolapQk
into art, from the outward parity of the strivings of modern
times.
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6 INTRODUCTION
The history of art knows nothing of jnational distinctions in
technique and subjects. Subjects rise according to the general
atmosphere of civilization. Technical acquirements, like all other
newly discovered truths, are the property of the whole world. In
fact it is the teaching of every manual of art, that since the
introduction of Christianity all the greater and more powerful
movements amongst the Latin and German races, taken together,
were not permanently localized ; they were not confined to one
people, but spread over the whole civilized world. Since the age
of the old Christian basilica and the Gothic cathedral, styles have
never been the product of single nations. And in this sense
"the new art" which has flooded Europe for twenty years is
not an invention of the French, but a free and independent
expression of the new spirit It was not in France, it was not
scattered here and there in particular countries, that this spirit
appeared ; it was a single stream of new blood pouring through
arteries to the East and the West, to the North and the South,
in painting as in all other departments of intellectual life. In
all literatures the same battles had' been raging long. What
Zola was to Parisians, Dostoievski was in Russia, Ibsen in
Norway, Echegaray in Spain, and Verga in Italy. It is probably
only because the French are people with a gift for the initiative
in art, because they so eminently possess the talent for cutting
the facets of a jewel, and for first giving an idea or a subject
an intelligible, attractive, and generally valid form, that the
revolution in painting proceeded from them, whilst in literature
they share that glory with the Norwegians and the Russians.
But, as a matter of fact, the main principle of modern art
had the effect of turning national distinctions to account far
more than had been the case in earlier times. In the first half
of the century there had been a tendency to suppress what is
individual and peculiar, subordinating it to a universal rule.
Painters of all countries moved at the command of the old
masters with all the evenness of soldiers on parade. Then, in
accordance with Courbet's doctrine, the artist became the slave
of nature. Painters opposed historical art and imitation with all
their power, and began to see nature with their own eyes, though
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Il^TRODUCTION 7
they worked, it must be owned, as objectively as if the medium
of the human soul were of evil inspiration and man capable of
beholding the world like a photographic apparatus, leaving his
inner self at home whilst the process was going on. Compared
with this kind of realism, Naturalism meant the liberation of
individual temperament. The Impressionists also dispensed with
all recipes and relied upon nature, though not, as Courbet, at
the expense of their artistic personality. On the contrary, they
demanded practically everything from this element. Instead of
copying nature pedantically in its stale reality, they endeavoured
to seize her in fleeting moments, beaming with colour, and in
all the sheer poetry of her essential life ; they sought her in
moments when she had a special quickening power upon the
spirit of the artist who abandoned himself to his personal vision.
The temperament of the painter, which had been a necessary
evil in the tyts of the realist, a danger to objectivity of repre-
sentation, and a hindrance to the effort at attaining complete
truth, now became the determining element in a work of art.
But temperament is an affair of blood. It is only a man of
feeble talent, such as could be dispensed with altogether, who
will be a mere imitator. The individuality of the true artist is
a thing which never loses the mark of race. The more completely
he abandons himself to his own temperament, the more distinctly
will he give expression to national individuality also. From
these differences of temperament amongst various peoples,
national distinctiveness in art can alone be said to spring. To
bring them under this point of view, assigning to every country
its place in the general chart of modern painting, will be the
task of the following section of this work.
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BOOK IV
THE PAINTERS OF LIFE
VOL. III.
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CHAPTER XXXIV
FRANCE
Bastien- Lepage, Vhermitte, Roll, Raffaelli, deNitiis^ Ferdinand Heilbuth^
Albert AubUt, Jean Beraud, Ulysse Bulin, ^douard Dantan, Henti
Gervex, Duez, Friant, Goeneutte, Dagnan-Boaveret, — The Landscape-
Painters: Seurat, Signac, Anquetin, Angrand, Lucien Pissafrro,
Pointelin, Jan Monchablon, Montenard, Dauphin, Rosset-Granget,
Entile Barau, Damoye, Boudin, Dumouliny Lebourg, Victor Binet,
Rjhte Billotte, — The Portrait - Painters : Fantin - Latour, Jacques
Entile Blanche, Boldini, — The Draughtsmen : Cheret, Willette,
Forain, Paul Renouard, Daniel Vierge.
PARIS, which for a hundred years had given the signal for
all novel tactics in European art, still remained at the head
of the movement ; the artistic temperament of the French people
themselves, and the superlatively excellent training which the
painter enjoys in Paris, enable him at once to follow every
change of taste with confidence and ease. In 1883 Manet died,
on the varnishing day of the Salon, and in the preface which
Zola wrote to the catalogue of the exhibition held after the
death of the master, he was well able to say : " His influence is
an accomplished fact, undeniable, and making itself more deeply
felt with every fresh Salon. Look back for twenty years, recall
those black Salons, in which even studies from the nude seemed
as dark as if they had been covered with mouldering dust. In
huge frames history and mythology were smothered in layers
of bitumen ; never was there an excursion into the province of
the real world, into life and into perfect light ; scarcely here or
there a tiny landscape, where a patch of blue sky ventured
bashfully to shine down. But little by little the Salons were
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12 MODERN PAINTING
seen to brighten, and the Romans and Greeks of mahogany to
vanish in company with the nymphs of porcelain, whilst the
stream of modern representations taken from ordinary life in-
creased year by year, and flooded the walls, bathing them with
vivid tones in the fullest sunlight. It was not merely a new
period ; it was a new painting bent upon reaching the perfect
light, respecting the law of colour values, setting every figure
in full light and in its proper place, instead of adapting it in
an ideal fashion according to established tradition."
When the way had been paved for this change, when the
new principles had been transferred from the chamber of experi-
ments to full publicity, from the Salon des Refuses to the Saloa
which was official, it was chiefly the merit of Bastien-Lepage
to have gained the first adherents to them amongst the public.
What was experimental in Manet ripened in him to easy
mastery. He is the first who overcame, in himself, the defiant
hostility of vehement youth, and attained truth and beauty. For
him the new technique was a matter of course, a natural
language, without which he could not have expressed himself
without constraint, and in a full, ripe, mature, unconscious,
and straightforward manner. But because he does not belong
to the pioneers of art, and merely adapted for the great public
elements that had been won by Manet, the immoderate praise
which was accorded him in earlier days has been recently
brought within more legitimate limits. It has been urged, by
way of restriction, that he stands in relation to Manet as
Breton to Millet, and that, admitting all differences, he has
nevertheless a certain resemblance to his teacher, Cabanel. As
the latter rendered Classicism elegant, Bastien-Lepage, it has
been said, softened the ruggedness of Naturalism, cut and
polished the- nails of his peasants, and made their rusticity a
pretty thing, qualifying it for the drawing-room. Degas was in
the habit of calling him the Bouguereau of Naturalism. But
such critics forget that it was just these amiable concessions
which helped the principles of Manet to prevail more swiftly
than would have been otherwise possible. All the forms and
ideas of the Impressionists, with which no one, outside the ring
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FRANCE
Paris : Bascktt.]
Jules Bastien- Lepage.
of artists, had been able
to reconcile himself, were
to be found in Bastien-
Lepage, purified, miti-
gated, and set in a golden
style. He followed the
iclaireurs^ as the leader
of the main body of the
army which has gained
the decisive battle, and
in this way he has ful-
filled an important mis-
sion in the history of
art.
\ Bastien - Lepage was
bom in ancient Damvil-
lers — once a small strong-
hold of Lorraine — in a
pleasant, roomy house that told a tale of even prosperity rather
than of wealth. As a boy he played amongst the venerable
moats which had been converted into orchards. Thus in his
youth he received the freshest impressions, being brought up in
the heart of nature. His father drew a good deal himself, and
kept his son at work with the pencil, without any aesthetic
theories, without any vague ideal, and without ever uttering the
word " academy " or " museum." Having left school in Verdun,
Bastien-Lepage went to Paris to become an official in the post-
office. Of an afternoon, however, he drew and painted with
Cabanel. But he was Cabanel's pupil much as Voltaire was a
pupil of the Jesuits. " My handicraft," as he said afterwards. ** I
learnt at the Academy, but not my art. You want to paint
what exists, and you are invited to represent the unknown ideal,
and to dish up the pictures of the old masters. In old days
I scrawled drawings of gods and goddesses, Greeks and Romans,
beings I didn't know, and didn't understand, and regarded with
supreme indifference. To keep up my courage, I repeated to
myself that this was possibly * grand art,* and I ask myself
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14
MODERN PAINTING
sometimes whether any-
thing academical still re-
mains in my composition.
I do not say that one
should only paint everyday
life ; but I do assert that
when one paints the past
it should, at any rate, be
made to look like some-
thing human, and corre-
spond with what one sees
around one. It would be
so easy to teach the mere
craft of painting at the
academies, without in-
cessantly talking about
Michael Angelo, and
Raphael and Murillo and
Domenichino. Then one
would go home afterwards
to Brittany, Gascony, Lor-
raine, or Normandy, and paint what lies around ; and any morning,
after reading, if one had a fancy to represent the Prodigal Son,
or Priam at the feet of Achilles, or anything of the kind, one
would paint such scenes in one's own fashion, without remini-
scences of the galleries — paint them in the surroundings of the
country, with the models that one has at hand, just as if the
old drama had taken place yesterday evening. It is only in
that way that art can be living and beautiful."
The outbreak of the war fortunately prevented him from
remaining long at the Academy. He entered a company of
Franc-Tireurs, took part in the defence of Paris, and returned
ill to Damvillers. Here he came to know himself and his
peculiar talent. At once a poet and a realist, he looked at
nature with that simple frankness which those alone possess
who have learnt from youth upwards to see with their own
eyes instead of trusting those of other people. His friends
Pai-iB : Baachti.}
Bastien- Lepage : Portrait of his Grand-
father.
{Bv perfMission of Mons. E, Basf/eft'Lepag^f the owner
of th€ picture.)
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FRANCE
Gaz. dts Bgaux-jifis.}
Bastien-Lepage : Sarah Bernhardt.
called him " primitive," and
there was some truth in'
what they said, for Bastien-
Lepage came to art free
from all trace of manner-
ism ; he knew nothing
of academical rules, and
merely relied upon his
eyes, which were » always.
open and trustworthy.
Looking back as far as
he could, he was able to
remember nothing except
gleaners bowed over the
stubble - fields, vintagers
scattered amid the furrows
of the vineyards, mowers
whose robust figures rose
brightly from the green
meadows, shepherdesses seeking shelter beneath tall trees from
the blazing rays of the midday sun, shepherds shivering in their
ragged cloaks in winter, peddlers hurrying with great strides
across the plain raked by a storm, laundresses laughing as they
stood at their tubs beneath the blossoming apple-trees. He
was impressionable to everything : the dangerous-looking tramp
who hung about one day near his father's house ; the wood-
cutter groaning beneath the weight of his burden ; the passer-by
trampling the fresh grass of the meadows and leaving his trace
behind him ; the little sickly girl minding her lean cow upon
a wretched field ; the fire which broke out in the night and set
the whole village in commotion. That was what he wanted to
paint, and that is what he has painted. The life of the peasants
of Lorraine is the theme of all his pictures, the landscape of
Lorraine is their setting. He painted what he loved, and he
loved what he painted.
It was in Damvillers that he felt at home as an artist. He
had his studio in the second story of his father's house, though
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i6
MODERN PAINTING
he usually painted in the
open air, either in the field
or the orchard, whilst his
grandfather, an old man of
eighty, was near him clip-
ping the trees, watering the
flowers, and weeding the
grass. His mother, a
genuine peasant, was always
busy with the thousand
cares of housekeeping. Of
an evening the whole family
sat together round the lamp,
his mother sewing, his father
reading the paper, his grand-
father with the great cat on
his lap, and Jules working.
At this time it was that
he produced those familiar
domestic scenes, thrown off
with a few strokes, which
were to be seen at the
exhibition of the works
which he left behind him.
He knew no greater pleasure
than that of drawing again
and again the portraits of
his father and mother, the old lamp, or the velvet cap of his
grandfather. At ten o'clock sharp his father gave the signal for
going to bed.
In Paris, indeed, other demands were made. In 1872 he
painted, with the object of being represented in the Salon, that
remarkable picture "In the Spring," the only one of his works
which is slightly hampered by conventionality in conception.
The pupil of Cabanel is making an effort at truth, and has
not yet the courage to be true altogether. Here, as in the
"Spring Song" which followed, there is a mixture of borrowed
Pari% : Baschet.]
Bastien-Lepage : *• The Flower-Girl."
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FRANCE
17
ParU : Btischei.}
Bastien-Lepage : Madame Drouet.
sentiment, work in the
old style and fresh Natur-
alism. The landscape is
painted from nature, and
the peasant woman is real,
but the Cupids are taken
from the old masters.
The next years were
devoted to competitive
labours. To please his
father and mother Bastien-
Lepage twice contested
the Prix de Rome, In
1873 he painted as a
prize exercise a " Priam
before Achilles," and in
1875 an "Annunciation
of the Angel to the
Shepherds," that now famous picture which received the medal at
the World Exhibition of 1878. And he who afterwards revelled
in the clearest plein-air painting here celebrates the secret
wonders of the night, though the influences of Impressionism
are here already visible. In his picture the night is as dark as
in Rembrandt's visions ; yet the colours are not harmonized in
gold-brown, but in a cool grey silver tone. And how simple
the effect of the heavenly appearance upon the shepherds lying
round the fire of coals! The place of the curly ideal heads of
the old sacred painting has been taken by those of bristly,
unwashed men who, nurtured amid the wind and the weather,
know nothing of those arts of toilette so much in favour with
the imitators of Raphael, and they receive the miracle with the
simplicity of elementary natures. Fear and abashed astonish-
ment at the angelic appearance are reflected in their faces, and
the plain and homely gestures of their hands are in correspond-
ence with their inward excitement. Even the angel turning
towards the shepherds was conceived in an entirely human and
simple way. In spite of this, or just because of it, Bastien failed
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i8
MODERN PAINTING
GajB. dta Beanx'Arts.}
Bastien-Lepage : " The Hay Harvest."
with his " Annunciation to the Shepherds,'* as he had done
previously with his " Priam." Once the prize was taken by
L^on Comerre, a pupil of Cabanel, and on the other occasion
by Josef Wencker, the pupil of Gdrdme. It was written in the
stars that Bastien-Lepage was not to go to Rome, and it did
him as little harm as it had done to Watteau a hundred and
sixty years before. In Italy Bastien-Lepage would only have
been spoilt for art. The model profitable for him was not
one of the old Classic painters, but nature as she is in Damvillers,
great maternal nature. When the works sent in for the com-
petition were exhibited, a sensation was made when one day
a branch of laurel was laid on the frame of Bastien-Lepage's
" Annunciation to the Shepherds " by Sarah Bernhardt. And
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FRANCE
Bastien-Lepage : ••Joan of Arc'
[BruHM photo.
Sarah Bernhardt's portrait became the most celebrated of the
small likenesses which soon laid the foundation of the painter's
fame.
The portrait of his grandfather, that marvellous work of a
young man of five-and-twenty, is the first picture in which he
was completely himself. The old man sits in a corner of the
garden, just as usual, in a brown cap, his spectacles upon his
nose, his arms crossed upon his lap, with a horn snuff-box and
a check handkerchief lying upon his knees. How perfectly
easy and natural is the pose, how thoughtful the physiognomy,
what a personal note there is in the dress ! Xor are there in
that garden, bathed in light, any of those black shadows which
only fall in the studio. Everything bore witness to a simplicity
and sincerity which justified the greatest hopes. After that first
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MODERN PAINTING
Paris : BtucM.]
Bastien-Lepage : " PkRE Jacques."
work the world knew
that Bastien-Lepage
was a pre-eminent
portrait-painter, and
he did not betray
the promise of his
youth. His succeed-
ing pictures showed
that he had not
merely rusticity and
nature to rely upon,
but that he was a
charmeur in the best
sense of the word.
This ingenuous
artist, who knew
nothing of the his-
tory of painting and
felt more at home
in the open air than in museums, was not ignorant, at any
rate, of the portraits of the sixteenth century, and had chosen •
for his likenesses a scale as small as that which Clouet and his
school preferred. The representation here reaches a depth of
characterization which recalls Jan van Eyck*s little pearls of
portrait-painting. In these works also he mostly confined him-
self to bright lights. Portraits of this type are those of his
brother, of Madame Drouet, the aged friend of Victor Hugo,
with her weary, gentle, benevolent face — a masterpiece of intimate
feeling and refinement — of his friend and biographer Andr^
Theuriet, of Andfieux the prefect of the police, and above all
the famous and signal work of inexorable truth and marvellous
delicacy, Sarah Bernhardt in profile, with her tangled chestnut
hair, sitting upon a white fur, arrayed in a white China-silk
dress with yellowish lights in it, and carefully examining a
Japanese bronze. The bizarre grace of the tragic actress, her
slender figure, fashioned, as it were, for Donatello, the nervous
intensity with which she sits there, her wild Chinese method
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FRANCE
Paris: BaschttJl
Bastien-Lepage : "The Beggar."
of wearing the hair,
and the profile of
which she is so proud,
have been rendered
in none of her many
likenesses with such
an irresistible force
of attraction as in
this little masterpiece.
In some of his other
portraits Bastien-
Lepage has not dis-
dained the charm of
obscure light ; he
has not done so, for
example, in the little
portrait of Albert
Wolff, the art-critic,
as he sits at his
writing-desk amongst his artistic treasures, with a cigarette in
his hand. Only Clouet and Holbein painted miniature portraits
of such refinement. Amongst moderns, probably Ingres alone
has reached such a depth of characterization upon the smallest
scale, and in general he is the most closely allied to Bastien-
Lepage as a portrait-painter in profound study of physiognomy,
and in the broad and, one might say, chased technique of his
little drawings. Comparison with Gaillard would be greatly to
the disadvantage of this great engraver, for Bastien-Lepage is
at once more seductive and many-sided. It is curious how
seldom his portraits have that family likeness which is else-
where to be found amongst almost all portrait-painters. In his
effort at penetrative characterization he alters, on every occasion,
his entire method of painting according to the personality, so
that it leaves at one time an effect that is bizarre, coquettish,
and full of intellectual power and spirit, at another one which
is plain and large, at another one which is bashful, sparing, and
bourgeois.
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MODERN PAINTING
Faris: Baschet.^
Bastien-Lepage : "The Pond at Damvillers."
As a painter of peasant life he made his first appearance
in 1878.
In the Salon of this year a sensation was made by a work
of such truth and poetry as had not been seen since Millet ;
this was the " Hay Harvest." It is noon. The June sun throws
its heavy beams over the mown meadows. The ground rises
slowly to a boundless horizon, where a tree emerges here and
there, standing motionless against the brilliant sky. The grey
and the green of these great plains — it is as if the weariness
of many toilsome miles rose out of them — weighed heavily upon
one, and created a sense of forsaken loneliness. Only two beings,
a pair of day-labourers, break the wide level scorched by a
quivering, continuous blaze of light. They have had their
midday meal, and their basket is lying near them upon the
ground. The man has now lain down to sleep upon a heap of
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FRANCE
23
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7 .^^^^T^HnE^/aA^H
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hay, with his hat
tilted over his eyes.
But the woman
sits dreaming, tired
with the long hours
of work, dazzled
with the glare of
the sun, and over-
powered by the
odour of the hay
and the sultriness
of noon. She does
not know the drift
of her thoughts ;
nature is working
upon her, and she
has feelings which
she scarcely under-
stands herself. She
is sunburnt and
ugly, and her head is square and heavy, and yet there lies a
world of sublime and mystical poetry in her dull, dreamy eyes
gazing into a mysterious horizon. By this picture and "The
Potato Harvest," which succeeded it in 1879, Bastien-Lepage,
the splendid, placed himself in the first line of modern French
painters. This time he renders the sentiment of October. The
sandy fields, impregnated with dust, rest in a white, subdued
light of noon ; pale brown are the potato stalks, pale brown the
blades of grass, and the roads are bright with dust ; and through
this landscape, with its wide horizon, where the tree-tops, half
despoiled already, shiver in the wind, there blows /e grand air,
a breeze strong as only Millet in his water-colours had the
secret of painting it. With Millet he shares likewise the breath
of tender melancholy which broods so sadly over his pictures.
"The Girl with the Cow," the little Fauvette, that child of
social misery — misery that lies sorrowful and despairing in the
gaze of her eyes — is, perhaps, the most touching example of his
\,BraHH photo,
Bastien-Lepage : " Love in the Village."
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24
MODERN PAINTING
brooding devotion to
truth. Her brown
dress is torn and
dirty, while a grey
kerchief borders her
famished, sickly face.
A waste, disconso-
late landscape, with
a frozen tree and
withered thistles,
stretches round like
a boundless Nir-
vana. Above there
is a whitish, clear,
tremulous sky,
making everything
paler, more arid
and wearily bright ;
there is no gleam of
rich luxuriant tints,
but only dry, stinted
colours ; and not a
sound is there in the air, not a scythe driving through the grass,
not a cart clattering over the road. There is something over-
whelming in this union between man and nature. One thinks
of the famous words of Taine : " Man is as little to be divided
from the earth as an animal or a plant Body and soul are
influenced in the same way by the environment of nature, and
from this influence the destinies of men arise." As an insect
draws its entire nature, even its form and colour, from the plant
on which it lives, so is the child the natural product of the
earth upon which it stands, and all the impulses of its spirit are
reflected in the landscape.
In 1879 Bastien-Lepage went a step further. In that year
appeared "Joan of Arc," his masterpiece in point of spiritual
expression. Here he has realized the method of treating his-
torical pictures which floated before him as an idea at the
Paris: Baschei.}
Bastien-Lepage :
•The Haymaker."
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FRANCE
«5
Maga»in§ of Art.]
Bastien-Lepage on his Sick-Bed.
(By permission of Moms. E. Bastien-Lepagtt
th§ ovontr of the copyright.)
Academy, and has, at the same
time, solved a problem which
beset him from his youth — the
penetration of mysticism and the
world of dreams into the reality
of life. *' The Annunciation to
the Shepherds," "In Spring,"
and "The Spring Song "were
merely stages on a course of
which he reached the destination
in "Joan of Arc." His ideal
was " to paint historical themes
without reminiscences of the
galleries^ — paint them in the sur-
roundings of the country, with
the models that one has at hand,
just as if the old drama had
taken place yesterday evening."
The scene of the picture is a garden of Damvillers painted
exactly from nature, with its grey soil, its apple- and pear-trees
clothed with small leaves, its vegetable beds, and its flowers
growing wild. Joan herself is a pious, careworn, dreamy country
girl. Every Sunday she has been to church, lost herself in long
mystic reveries before the old sacred pictures, heard the misery
of France spoken of; and the painted statues of the parish
church and its tutelary saints pursue her thoughts. And just
to-day, as she sat winding yarn in the shadow of the apple-trees,
murmuring a prayer, she heard of a sudden the heavenly
voices speaking. The spirits of St. Michael, St. Margaret,
and St. Catharine, before whose statues she has prayed so
often, have freed themselves from the wooden images and float
as light phantoms, as pallid shapes of mist, which will as sud-
denly vanish into air before the eyes of the dreaming girl.
Joan rises trembling, throwing her stool over, and steps forward.
She stands in motionless ecstasy stretching out her left arm,
and gazing into vacancy with her pupils morbidly dilated. Of
all human phases of expression which painting can approach,
VOL. III. 3
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MODERN PAINTING
such mystical de-
lirium is perhaps the
hardest to render ;
and probably it was
only by the aid of
hypnotism, to which
the attention of the
painter was directed
just then by the ex-
periments of Charcot,
that Bast ien- Lepage
was enabled to pro-
duce in his model
that look of religious
rapture, oblivious to
the whole world,
which is expressed
in the vague glance
of her eyes, blue as
the sea.
"Joan of Arc"
was succeeded by " The Beggar," that life-size figure of the haggard
old tramp, who, with a thick stick under his arm — of which he
would make use upon any suitable occasion — picks up what he
can in the villages, saying a paternoster before the doors while
he begs. This time he has been ringing at the porch of an
ordinary middle-class dwelling, and he is sulkily thrusting into
the wallet slung round his shoulders a great hunch of bread
which a little girl has just given to him. There is a mixture of
spite and contempt in his eyes as he goes off in his heavy
wooden shoes with a shuffling gait. And behind the doorpost
the little girl, who, in her pretty blue frock, has such a trim air
of wearing her Sunday best, glances at the mysterious old man,
rather scared.
" Un brave Homme," or " Le P^re Jacques," as the master
afterwards called the picture, was to some extent a pendant to
" The Beggar." , He comes out of the wood wheezing, with a
Marie Baskirtscheff : "A Meeting."
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27
UArt,^
iBelltnger sc.
Leon L'hermitte.
pointed cap upon his head and
a heavy bundle of wood upon
his shoulders, whilst at his side
his little grandchild is plucking
the last flowers. It is November ;
the leaves have turned yellow and
cover the ground. Pire Jacques
is providing against the Winter.
And the Winter is drawing near
— death.
Bastien-Lepage's health had
never been good, nor was Parisian
life calculated to make it better.
Slender and delicate, blond with
blue eyes and a sharply chiselled
profile — toui petit, tout blond, les
-cluveux a la bretonne, le nez re-
iroussi et une barbe d' adolescent, as Marie Baskirtscheff describes
him — he was just the type which Parisiennes adore. His studio
Avas besieged ; there was no entertainment to which he was not
invited, no committee, no meeting to hold judgment over pictures
at which he was not present Amateurs fought for his works and
asked for his advice when they made purchases. Pupils flocked
to him in numbers. He was intoxicated with the Parisian world,
enchanted with its modern elegance ; he loved the vibration of
life, and rejoiced in masked balls like a child. Consumptive
people are invariably sensuous, drinking in the pleasures of
life with more swift and hasty draughts. He then left Paris
and plunged into the whirlpool of other great cities. From
Switzerland, Venice, and London he came back with pictures
and landscapes. In London, indeed, he painted that beautiful
picture " The Flower-Girl," the pale, delicate child upon whose
faded countenance love and hunger have so early left their traces.
Through the whole summer of 1882 he worked incessantly in
Damvillers., Once more he painted his native place in a land-
scape of the utmost refinement Here, as in his portraits, every-
thing has been rendered with a positive tren chancy, with a
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28 MODERN PAINTING
severe, scientific effort after truth, in which there lies what is
almost a touch of aridness. And yet an indescribable magic
is thrown over the fragrant green of the meadows, the young,,
quivering trees, and the still pond which stretches rippling in
the cloudless summer sun.
In 1883 there appeared in the Salon that wonderful picture
" Love in the Village." The girl has hung up her washing on
the paling, and the neighbour's son has run down with a flower
in his hand ; she has taken the flower, and in confusion they
have suddenly turned their backs upon each other and stand
there without saying a word. They love each other, and wish
to marry, but how hard is the first confession. Note how the
lad is turning his fingers about in his embarrassment ; note the
confusion of the girl, which may be seen, although she is look-
ing towards the background of the picture ; note the spring
landscape, which is as fair as the figures it surrounds.
It is a tender dreamer who gives himself expression here —
and love came to him also.
Enthusiastically adored by the women in his school of paint-
ing, he had found a dear friend in Marie Baskirtscheff^ the dis-
tinguished young Russian girl who had become his pupil just as-
his fame began to rise. It is charming to see the enthusiasm
with which Marie speaks of him in her diary. ''Je peins sur la
propre palette du vrai Bastien^ avec des couleurs d ////, son pinceau^
son atelier^ et son frere pour viodkle!^ And how the others envy
her because of it ! " La petite Suidoise voulait toucher d sa palette^
With Marie he sketched his plans for the future, and in the midst
of this restless activity he was summoned hence together with
her, for she also died young, at the age of twenty-four, just as
her pictures beg^n to create a sensation. A touching idyll in
her diary tells how the girl learnt, when she was dying of con-
sumption, that young Bastien had also fallen ill, and been given
up as hopeless. So long as Marie could go out of doors she
went with her mother and her aunt to visit her sick friend ;
and when she was no longer allowed to leave the house he had
himself carried up the steps to her drawing-room by his brother,^
and there they both sat beside each other in armchairs, and saw
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FRANCE • 29
the end draw near, merciless and inevitable, the end of their
young lives, their talents, their ambition, and their hopes. "At
last ! Here it is then, the end of all my sufferings ! So many
efforts, so many wishes, so many plans, so many ,
and then to die at four-and-twenty upon the threshold of them
all!"
Her last picture was one of six schoolboys, sons of the
people, who are standing at a street corner chattering ; and it
makes a curiously virile impression, when one considers that it
was painted by a blonde young girl, who slept under dull blue
silken bed-curtains, dressed almost entirely in white, was rubbed
with perfumes after a walk in hard weather, and wore on her
shoulders furs which cost two thousand francs. It hangs in the
Luxembourg, and for a long time a lady dressed in mourning
used to come there every week and cry before the picture painted
by the daughter whom she had lost so early. [Marie died on
October 31st, 1884, and Bastien barely a month afterwards. " The
Funeral of a Young Girl,** in which he wished to immortalize the
funeral of Marie, was his last sketch, his farewell to the world,
to the living, alluring, ever splendid nature which he loved so
much, grasped and comprehended so intimately, and to the hopes
which built up their deceptive castles in the air before his dying
gaze. He died before he reached Raphael's age, for he was
barely thirty-six. The final collapse came on December loth,
1884, upon a sad, rainy evening, after he had lain several months
upon a bed of sickness. His frame was emaciated, and as light
as that of a child ; his face was shrivelled — the eyes alone had
their old brilliancy.
On December 14th his body was brought to the Eastern
railway-station. The coffin was covered with roses, white elder
blossoms, and immortelles. And now he lies buried in Lorraine, in
the little churchyard of Damvillers, where his father and grand-
father rest beneath an old apple-tree. Red apple-blossoms he
loved himself so dearly. His importance Marie Baskirtscheff
has summarized simply and gracefully in the words : " Cest un
artiste puissanty originel^ dest un pokte^ dest un philosophe ; les
autres ne sont que des fabricants de n'importe quoi d c6ti de lui.
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i'f'if/ijh
L'hermitte: "Paying the Reapers.'
. . . On ne peut plus rien regarder quand on voit sa peinturCy
parce que (fest beau comme la nature^ comme la vie, . . ."
This tender poetic trait which runs through his works
is what principally distingfuishes him from Uhermitte^ the
most sterling representative of the picture of peasant life at
the present time. I/hermitte, also, like most of these painters
of peasants, was himself the son of a peasant He came from
Mont- Saint- P6re, near Chftteau-Thierry, a quiet old town, where
from the great " Hill of Calvary " one sees a dilapidated Gothic
church and the moss-grown roofs of thatched houses. His
grandfather was a vine-grower and his father a schoolmaster.
He worked in the field himself, and, like Millet, he painted after-
wards the things which he had done himself in youth. His
principal works were pictures of reapers in the field, peasant
women in church, young wives nursing their children, rustics at
work, here and there masterly water-colours, pastels and char-
coal drawings, in 1888 the pretty illustrations to Andr6 Theuriet's
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31
ifOtriiif>t St\
L'hermitts: ''Resting from Work."
{By ptrmistum of Messrs. BoHSSoei, Valadon <S* Co.t the owners of the copyright.)
Vie RustiquCy the decoration ol a hall at the Sorbonne with repre-
sentations of rustic life, in his later period occasionally pictures
from other circles of life, such as " The Fish-market of St.
Malo," " The Lecture in the Sorbonne," " The Musical Soiree," and
finally, as a concession to the religious tendency of recent years,
a " Christ visiting the House of a Peasant" He has his studio
in the Rue Vaquelin in Paris, though he spends most of his time
in the village where he was born, and where he now lives quietly
and simply with the peasants. Most of his works, which are
to be ranked throughout amongst the most robust productions
of modern Naturalism, are painted in the great glass studio
which he built here in the garden of his father's house. Whilst
Bastien- Lepage, through a certain softness of temperament, was
moved to paint the weak rather than the strong, and less often
men in the prime of life than patriarchs, women, and children.
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M
41
^ :^^.r*^Jv;
wv<9M^-
^^W
b^
--■■ :'^^,^V-1^^
m^^''\
Roll: "The Strike.*'
(By ptrmiBsion of th€ Arttsi.)
Uhermitte displays the peasant in all his rusticity. He knows the
country and the labours of the field which make the hands homy
and the face brown, and he has rendered them in a strictly
objective manner, in a great sculptural style. Bastien-Lepage
is inclined to refinement and poetic tenderness ; in Uhermitte
everything is clear, precise, and sober as pale, bright daylight.
Alfred Roll was born in Paris, and the artisan of the Parisian
streets is the chief hero of his pictures. Like Zola in his
Rougon-Macquart series, he set before himself the aim of de-
picting the social life of the present age in a great sequence of
pictures — the workman's strike, war, and toil. His pictures
give one the impression that one is looking down from the
window upon an agitated scene in the street And his broad,
plebeian workmanship is in keeping with his rough and demo-
cratic subjects. He made a beginning in 1875 with the colossal
picture of the " Flood at Toulouse." The roofs of little peasants'
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33
houses rise out of the ex-
panse of water. Upon one
of them a group of country
people have taken refuge,
and are awaiting a boat
which is coming from far.
A young mother summons
her last remnant of strength
to save her trembling child.
Beside her an old woman
is sitting, sunk in the stupor
of indifference, while in
front a bull is swimming, j^
bellowing wildly from the
water. The influence of
G^ricault's "Raft of the
Medusa" is indeed ob-
vious ; but how much more
plainly and actually has
the struggle for existence
been represented here, than
by the great Romanticist, still hampered by Classicism. The
devastating effect of the masses of water in all their elemental
force could not have been more impressively rendered than has
been done through this bull struggling for life with all its
enormous strength.
In technique this picture belongs to the painter's earlier
phase. Even in the colouring of the naked figures it has still
the dirty heaviness of the Bolognese. This bond which united
him to the school of Courbet was broken when— probably under
the influence of Zola*s Germinal— \it. painted "The Strike," in
1880. The stern reality which goes through Zola's accounts of
the life of pit-men is likewise to be found in these ragged and
starving figur,cs, clotted with coal dust, assembling in savage
desperation before the manufactory walls, prepared for a rising.
The dull grey of a rainy November morning spreads above. In
1887 he painted war, war in the new age, in which one man is
Ga«. dt9 B€a9tX'Ati3.] [DHJardin Mio.
Roll; "Manda LamItrie, Fermiere."
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MODERN PAINTING
GoM. tUs B€aMx-Arts.\
Roll: "The Woman with a Bull."
{By permission of the Artist.)
iDujardin helio.
not pitted against another, but great masses of men, who kill
without seeing one another, are made to manoeuvre with scien-
tific accuracy — war in which the balloon, distant signalling, and
all the discoveries of science are turned to account. " Work "
was the last picture of the series. There are men toiling in the
hot, dusty air of Paris with sandstones of all sizes. Life-size,
upon life-size figures, the drops of sweat were seen upon the
apathetic faces, and the patches upon the blouses and breeches.
Any one who only reckons as art what is fine and delicate
will necessarily find these pictures brutal ; but whoever delights
in seeing art in close connection with the age, as it really is,
cannot deny to Alfred Roll's great epics of labour the value of
artistic documents of the first rank.
He devoted himself to the more delicate problems of light,
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FRANCE
35
especially in certain
idyllic summer
scenes, in which he
delighted in painting
life-size bulls and
cows upon the
meadow, and beside
them a girl, some-
times intended as a
milkmaid and some-
times as a nymph.
Of this type was the
picture of 1888, "A
Woman who has
milked a Cow'*
{Manda Lamitriey
Fermiere). With a
full pail she is going
home across the
sunny meadow.
Around there is a
gentle play of light, a soft atmosphere transmitting faint reflec-
tions, lightly resting upon all forms, and mildly shed around them.
A yet more subtile study of light in 1889 was named "The
Woman with a Bull." Pale sunbeams are rippling through the
fluttering leaves, causing a delicious play of fine tones upon
the nude body of a young woman and the shining hide of a bull.
In a strip of ground in the suburbs of Paris, where the
town has come to an end and the country has not yet begun,
Raffaelliy perhaps the most spirited of the Naturalists, has taken
up his abode. He has painted the workman, the vagabond,
the restlessness of the man who does not know where he is
going to eat and sleep ; the small householder, who has all
he wants ; the ruined man, overtaken by misfortune, whose
only remaining passion is the brandy-bottle, — he has painted
them all amid the melancholy landscape around Paris, with its
meagre region still in embryo, and its great straight roads losing
Paris: Boussod-Valadon."]
Rafeaelli : " The Grandfather."
(By permission of the Ariisi.)
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themselves disconsolately
in the horizon. Th^ophile
Gautier has written some-
where that the geometri-
cians are the ruination of
landscapes. If he lived in
these days he would find,
on the contrary, that those
monotonous roads running
straight as a die give land-
scape a strange and melan-
choly grandeur. One
thinks of the passage in
Zola's Germincdy where the
two socialists, Etienne and
Suwarin, walk in the even-
ing silently along the edge
of a canal, which, with the
perpendicular stems of
trees at its side, stretches
for miles, as if measured with a pair, of compasses, through a
monotonous flat landscape. Only a few low houses standing
apart break the straight line of the horizon ; only here and there,
in the distance, does there emei^e a human being, whose
diminished figure is scarcely perceptible above the ground.
RafTaelli was the first to understand the virginal beauty of these
localities, the dumb complaining language of poverty-stricken
regions spreading languidly beneath a dreary sky. He is the
painter of poor people and of wide horizons, the poet and
historian of humanity living in the neighbourhood of great
cities. There sits a house-owner, or the proprietor of a shop,
in front of his own door; there a peddler, or a man delivering
parcels, hurries across the field ; there a rag-picker's dog strays
hungry about a lonely farmyard. Sometimes the wide land-
scapes are relieved by the manufactories, water- and gas-works
which feed the huge crater of Paris. At other times the snow
lies on the ground, the skeletons of trees stand along the
Paris: BascheL]
Raffaelli : " Paris 4* I."
(By permission of tks Artist.)
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FRANCE
37
high-road, and a
driver shouts to his
team ; the heavy
working nags,
covered with worsted
cloths, shiver, and
an impression of in-
tense cold goes
through you to your
very bones. Indeed
Raffaelli's austerity
was first subdued
a little when he
came to make a
lengthy residence in
England. Then he
acquired a prefer-
ence for the light-
coloured atmosphere
and the gracious
verdure of nature in
England. He began
to take pleasure in
tender spring landscapes, in place of rigid scenes of snow. The
poor soil no longer seems so hard and inhospitable, but becomes
attractive beneath the soft, peaceful, bluish atmosphere. Even
the uncivilized beings, with famine in their eyes, who wandered
about in his earliest pictures, become milder and more resigned.
The grandfather, in his blouse and wooden shoes, leads his
grandchild by the hand amid the first shyly budding verdure.
Old men sit quietly in the grounds of the almshouse, with the
sun shining upon them. People no longer stand in the mist
of November evenings with their teeth chattering from the
frost, but breathe with delight the soft air of bright spring
mornings.
Raffaelli has been for fifteen years the master of this narrowly
circumscribed region, and has recorded his impressions of it in
Paris: Bous^od-ValadoH.]
Raffaelli : " The Old Convalescents."
{By ptrmitsioH oftht Artist.)
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MODERN PAINTING
an entirely personal manner,
in a style which in one of
his brochures he has himself
designated " caracterisme."
And by comparing the cos-
tumed models in the pictures
of the previous generation
with the figures of Raffaelli,
the happiness of this phrase
is at once understood. In
fact Raffaelli is a great
master of characterization,
and perhaps nowhere more
trenchant than in the
illustrations which he drew
for the Revue Illustrie,
Spirited caricatures of
theatrical representations al-
ternate with the grotesque
figures of the Salvation
Army. Yet he feels most
in his element when he dives into the horrors of Paris by night
The types which he has created live ; they meet you at every
step, wander about the boulevards, in the caf6s and outside
the barriers, and they haunt you with their looks of misery, vice,
and menace.
Giuseppe de Ntttis, an Italian who has become a Parisian,
a bold, searching, nervously excitable spirit, was the first
gentiifiomfne of Impressionism, the first who made a transition
from the rugged painting of the proletariat to coquettish pictures
from the fashionable quarters of the city, and reconciled even
the wider public to the principles of Impressionism by the delicate
flavouring of his works.
"It was a cold November morning. Cold it was certainly,
but in compensation the morning vapour was as fine as snow
turned into mist. Yonder in the crowded, populous, sooty
quarters of the city, in Paris busy with trade and industry.
GoM. dts Bta%iX'Art&.\ [Artist tc*
Raffaelu : " The Midday Soup.**
(By permission of the Artiste)
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FRANCE
39
^^
CojB. d«9 Beaux- Arts.]
Giuseppe de Nittis.
this early vapour which settles in
the broad streets is not to be
found ; the hurry of awakening
life, and the confused movement
of country carts, omnibuses, and
heavy, rattling freight - waggons,
have scattered, divided, and dis-
persed it too quickly. Every
passer-by bears it away on his
shabby overcoat, on his threadbare
comforter, or disperses it with his
baggy gloves. It drizzles in the
shivering blouses and the water-
proofs of toiling poverty, it dissolves
before the hot breath of the many
who have passed a sleepless or dissipated night, it is absorbed
by the hungry, it penetrates into shops which have just been
opened, into gloomy backyards, and it floats up the staircases,
dripping on the walls and banisters, right up to the frozen
attics. And that is the reason why so little of it remains out-
side. But in the spacious and stately quarter of Paris, upon the
broad boulevards planted with trees and the empty quays, the
mist lay undisturbed, section over section, like an undulating
mass of transparent wool in which one felt isolated, hidden,
almost imbedded in splendour, for the sun rising lazily on the
distant horizon already shed a mild purple glow, and in this light
the mist level with the tops of the houses shone like a piece of
muslin spread over scarlet."
This opening passage in Daudet's Le Naiad most readily
gives the mood awakened by Giuseppe de Nittis* Parisian land-
scapes. De Nittis was born in 1846 at Barletta, near Naples,
in poor circumstances. In 1868, when he was two-and-twenty
years of age, he came to Paris, where G6r6me and Meissonier
interested themselves in him. Intercourse with Manet led him
to his range of subject. He became the painter of Parisian
street-life as it is to be seen in the neighbourhood of the quays,
the painter of mist, smoke, and air. The Salons of 1875 ^ind 1876
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MODERN PAINTING
contained his first pictures,
the "Place des Pyra-
mides " and the view of the
Pont Royal, fine studies
of mist with a tremulous
grey atmosphere, out of
which graceful little figures
raise their faint, vanishing
outlines. From that time
he has stood at the centre
of artistic life in Paris.
He observed everything,
saw everything, painted
everything — a strip of the
boulevards, the Place du
Carrousel, the Bois de
Boulogne, the races, the
Champs Elys^es, in the
daytime with the budding
chestnuts, the flower-beds
blooming in all colours,
the playing fountains, the
women of grace and
beauty, and the light
carriages which crowd
between the Arc de
Triomphe, the Obelisk, and the Gardens of the Tuileries, and in
the evening when chains of white and coloured lights flash
through the dark trees. De Nittis has interpreted all atmospheric
phases. He seized the intangible, the vibration of vapour, the
dust of summer and the rains of December days. He breathed
the atmosphere, as it were, with his eyes, and felt with accuracy
its greater or diminished density. The great public he gained
by his exquisite sense of feminine elegance. Of marvellous
charm are the figures which give animation to the Place des
Pyramides, the Place du Carrousel, the Quai du Pont Neuf—
women in the most coquettish toilettes, men chatting together
Gan, d98 Beaux-Arts.]
De Nittis:
[Dujardin htlio.
"Paris Races."
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41
De Nittis: "The Place du Carrousel."
as they lean against a newspaper kiosk, flower-girls offering
bouquets, loiterers carelessly turning over the books exposed
for sale upon a stall, bonnes with short petticoats and broad
ribbons, smart-looking boys with hoops, and little girls with
the air of great ladies. Since Gabriel de Saint Aubin, Paris
has had no more faithful observer. " De Nittis," said Claretie
in 1 876, " paints modern French life for us as that brilliant
Italian, the Abb^ Galliani, spoke the French language — that is
to say, better than we do it ourselves."
The summit of his ability was reached in his last pictures
from England. One knows the London fogs of November,
which hover over the town as black as night, so that the gas
has to be lit at noon, fogs which are suffocating and shroud
the nearest houses in a veil of crape. Scenes like this were
made for De Nittis' brush. He roamed about in the smoke of
the city, observed the fashion of the season, the confusion of
cabs and drays upon London Bridge, the surge and hurry
VOL. iiu 4
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Paris: Boussod-Valadon.'^
Heilbuth : " In the Grass/
of the human stream in Cannon Street, the vast panorama of
the port of London veiled with smoke and fog, the fashionable
West End with its magnificent clubs, the green, quiet squares
and great plainly built mansions ; he studied the dense, smoky
atmosphere of fog compressed into floating phantom shapes,
the remarkable effects of light seen when a fresh breeze
suddenly drives the black clouds away. And again his eye
adapted itself at once to the novel environment. It was not
merely the blithe splendour of Paris that found an incomparable
painter in Giuseppe de Nittis, but London also with its thick
atmosphere and that mixture of damp, tawny fog and grey
smoke. Piccadilly, the National Gallery, the railway arch at
Charing Cross, the Green Park, the Bank, and Trafalgar Square
are varied samples of these English studies, which showed British
painters themselves that not one of them had understood the
foggy atmosphere of London as this tourist who was merely
travelling through the town. "Westminster" and "Cannon Street,"
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IRANCE
43
a pair of dreary,
sombre symphonies
in ash-grey, perhaps
display the highest
of what De Nittis
has achieved in the
painting of air.
Born in Ham-
burg, though a natur-
alized Frenchman,
Ferdinand Heilbuth
took up again the
cult of the Paris-
ienne in the wake of
Stevens, and as he
turned the acqui-
sitions of Impres-
sionism to account
in an exceedingly
pleasing manner,
he seems, in com-
parison with Stevens, lighter and more vaporous and gracious.
He painted water-scenes, scenes on the greensward or in the
entrance squares of chiteaux, placing in these landscapes girls
in fashionable summer toilette. He was particularly fond of
representing them in a white hat, a white or pearl-grey dress
with a black belt and long black gloves, in front of a bright
grey stream, seated upon a fallen trunk, against which their
parasol is resting. The bloom of the atmosphere is harmonized
in the very finest chords with the virginal white of their dresses
and the fresh verdure of the landscapes. His pictures are little
Watteaus of the nineteenth century, as discreet in effect as they
are piquant.
After Heilbuth's death Albert Aublet, who in earlier days
depicted sanguinary historical pieces, became the popular painter
of girls, whose beauties are gracefully interpreted in his pictures.
When he paints the composer Massenet, sitting at the piano
Paris: BoHssod-Vala^oH,Z
' Aublet: "Studying the Score.*
. (By permissiOM of- tht Artist)
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MODERN PAINTING
UArt.-\
\E. ChampoUion sc»
BuTiN : " The Departure/
surrounded by flowers and beautiful women — when he represents
the doings of the fashionable world on the shore at a popular
watering-place, or young ladies plucking roses, or wandering
meditatively in bright dresses amid green shrubs and yellow
flowers, or going into the sea in white bathing-gowns, there
may be nothing profound or particularly artistic in it all, but it
is none the less charming, attractive, bright, joyous, and fresh.
/ean B/raud, another interpreter of Parisian elegance, has
found material for numerous pictures in the blaze of the theatres,
the naked shoulders of ballet-girls, the dress-coats of old gentle-
men, the evening humour of the boulevards, the mysteries of the
Caf6 Anglais, the bustle of Monte Carlo, and the footlights of
the Cafe-Concert. But absolute painter he is not. One would
prefer to have a less oily heaviness in his works, a bolder and
freer execution more in keeping with the lightness of the subject,
and for this one would willingly surrender the touches of ^enre
which B6raud cannot let alone even in these days. But his
illustrations are exceedingly spirited.
It would be impossible to classify painters according to
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FRANCE
45
L'Art.]
[DufMpxt..
Ulysse Butin.
further specialities. In fact it
is as little possible to bring
individuals into categories as it
was at the time of the Renais-
sance, when the painter busied
himself at the same time with
sculpture, architecture, and the
artistic crafts. Great artists do
not wall themselves up in a
narrow space to be studied.
Liberated from the studio and
restored to nature, they en-
deavour, as in the best periods
of art, to encompass life as
widely as possible. A mere
enumeration, such as chance offers, and such as will preserve
a sense for the individuality of every man's talent without at-
tempting comparisons, seems therefore a better method to pursue
than a systematic grouping which could only be attained
artificially and by ambiguities.
The late Ulysse Butin settled down on the shore of the
Channel and painted the life of the fishermen of Villerville, a
little spot upon the coast near Honfleur. Sturdy, large-boned
fellows drag their nets across the strand, carry heavy anchors
home, or lie smoking upon the dunes. The rays of the evening
sun play upon their clothes ; the night sinks, and a {>rofound
silence rests upon the landscape.
By preference Edouard Dantan has painted the interiors of
sculptors' studios — men turning pots, casting plaster, or working
on marble, with grey blouses, contrasting delicately with the
light grey walls of workrooms which are themselves flooded with
bright and tender light Very charming was "A Plaster-Cast
from Nature," painted in 1887 : in the centre was a nude
feminine figure most naturally posed, whilst a fine, even atmo-
sphere, which lay softly upon the girl's form, streaming gently
over it, was shed around
Having cultivated in the beginning the province of feminine
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46
MODERN FAINTING
nudity with little
success, in such
pictures as " The
Bacchante ** of the
Luxembourg, " The
Woman with the
Mask," and "Rolla,"
Henri Gervex^ the
spoilt child of con-
temporary French
painting, turned to
the lecture-rooms of
the universities, and
by his picture of
Dr. P6an at La
Salp^tri^re gave the
impulse to the many
hospital pictures, sur-
gical operations, and
so forth which have
since inundated the
Salon. With the upper part of her body laid bare and her
lips half-opened, the patient lies under the influence of narcotics,
whilst Plan's assistant is counting her pulse. His audience have
gathered round. The light falls clear and peacefully into the
room. Everything is rendered simply, without diffidence, and
with confidence and quietude.
Duez^ when he had had his first success in 1879 with a
large religious picture— the triptych in the Luxembourg of Saint
Cuthbert — appeared with animal pictures, landscapes, portraits, or
fashionable representations of life in the streets and caf6s. In
the hands of such mild and complacent spirits as Friant and
Goeneutte, Naturalism fell into a mincing, lachrymose condition ;
but in a series of quiet, unpretentious pictures Dagnan-Bauveret
was more successful in meeting the growing inclination of
recent years for contemplative repose, just as in the province
of literature Ohnet, Malot, and Claretie, with their spirit of
Paris: Boussod-Valadon."]
Dantan : " A Plaster-Cast from Nature.'
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47
compromise, came
after those stern
naturalists Flaubert
and Zola. Accord-
ing to the drawing
of Paul Renouard,
Dagnan-Bouveret is
a little, black-haired
man with a dark
complexion and
deep - set eyes, a
short blunt nose,
and a black pointed
beard. There is
nothing in him
which betrays spirit,
caprice, and audac-
ity, but everything
which is an indica-
tion of patience and
endurance ; and, as
a matter of fact, such
are the qualities by
which he has gained his high position. He is a man of poetic
talent, though rather tame, and stands to Bastien-Lepage and Roll
as Breton to Millet. One often fancies that it is possible to
observe in him that German Gemiith^ that genial temper, for the
satisfaction of which Frau Marlitt provided in fiction. A pupil
of Gerdme, he made his first great success in the Salon of 1879
with the picture " A Wedding at the Photographer's." This
was succeeded in 1882 by "The Nuptial Benediction;" in i88j
by "The Vaccination;" in 1884 by "The Horse-pond" of the
Mus^e Luxembourg; in 1885 by a "Blessed Virgin," a homely,,
thoughtful, and delicately coloured picture which gained him
many admirers in Germany; and in 1886 by "The Consecrated
Bread," in which he was one of the first to take up the study
of light in interiors. In a Catholic church there are sitting
Ga». d€s B§aMx-Arts.] [Du/ardut Mio.
Gervex : " Dr. Pean at La SALpiTRiBRE.**
(By permission oj ikt Ariisl.)
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MODERN PAINTING
devout women — most of
them old, but also one
who is young — and chil-
dren, while a chorister
is handing them conse-
crated bread. This simple
scene in the damp village
church, filled with a tender
gloom, is rendered with a
winning homely plainness,
and with that touch of
compassionate sentiment-
ality which is the peculiar
note of Ds^nan-Bouveret.
The " Bretonnes au Par-
don " of 1889 thoroughly
displayed this definitive
Dagnan : a soft, peaceful
picture, full of simple and
cordial poetry. In the
grass behind the church, the plain spire of which rises at the
end of a wall, women are sitting, both young and old, in black
dresses and white caps. One of them is reading a prayer from
a devotional book. The rest are listening. Two men stand at
the side. Everything is at peace ; the scheme of colour is soft
and quiet, while in the execution there is something recalling
Holbein, and the effect is idyllically moving, like the chime of
a village bell when the sun is going down.
The zeal with which painters took up the study of contem-
porary life, so long neglected, did not, however, prevent the
quality of French landscape-painting from being exceedingly
high. New parts of the world were no longer to be conquered.
For fifteen years none of the nobler, nor of the less noble,
landscapes of France had been neglected, nor any strip of field ;
there were no flowers that were not plucked, whether they were
cultivated in forcing-houses or had sprung pallid in a dark
garden of old Paris. It was only the joy in brightness and the
LAri.^
DuEz:
[£. Champolliwt sc,
'Om the Cuff."
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FRANCE
49
UAri,^
DuEz: "The End of October."
{By permistiion of the Artist,)
[F. Miliua se.
newly discovered beauty of sunshine that brought with them
any change of material. Following the Impressionists, the land-
scape-painters deserted their forests. Those "woodland depths/'
such as Diaz and Rousseau painted, seldom appear in the works
of the most modern artists. In opposition the severest to such
once popular scenes, there lies the plain, the wide expanse
stretching forth like a carpet in bright, shining tones under the
play of tremulous sunbeams, and scarcely do a few trees break
the quiet line of the distant horizon. At first the poorest and
most humble comers were preferred The painting of the poor
brought even the most forlorn regions into fashion. Later, in
landscape also, a bent towards the most tender lyricism corre-
sponded with that inclination to idyllic sentiment which was on
the increase in figure-painting. These painters have a peculiar
joy in the fresh mood of morning, when a light vapour wavers
over the meadows and the waters, before it is dissolved into
shining dew. They love the blooming fruit-trees and the first
smile of spring, or revel in the gradations of the dusk, rich as
they are in shades of tint, mistily wan and grey, pale lilac,
delicate- green, and milky blue. The perspective is broad and
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MODERN TAINTING
fine ; objects are entirely
absorbed by the harmony
of colour, and the older
and coarser treatment of
free light heightened to
the most refined play
by the most delicate
shades of hue. And these
colourists deriving from
Corot, with their soft grey
enveloping all, are opposed
by others who strike novel
and higher chords upon
the keyboard of Manet-
landscape-painters whom
such simple and intimate
things do not satisfy,
but who search after un-
expected, fleeting, and
extraordinary impressions,
analyzing fantastically combined effects of light
A group of New-Impressionists> who might be called
prismatic painters, stand in this respect at the extreme left
Starting from the conviction that the traditional mixing of
colours upon the pallet results after all only in pallet-tones, and
can never fully express the intensity and pulsating vividness of
tone values, they founded the theory of the resolution of tones —
in other words, they break up all compound colours into their
primary hues, set these directly upon the canvas, and leave it
to the eye of the spectator to undertake the mixture for itself.
In particular George Seurat was an energetic disseminator of
this painting in points which excited new discussions amongst
artists and new polemics in the newspapers. His pictures were
entirely composed of flaming, glowing, and shining patches.
Close to these pictures nothing was to be seen but a confusion
of blotches, but at the proper distance they took shape as wild
sea-studies in the brilliant hues of noon, with rocks and stones
LAfi.\ {Salmon ac.
Dagnan-Bouveret : '* Consecrated Bread."
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franx:e
sr
LAH.^ [J. Pttyplat sc.
Dagnan-Bouveret : " Bretonnes au Pardon."
(By penntasiott of tht Artisf„)
' Standing out in relief,
orgies of blue, red,
and violet Such
was Seurat's manner
of seeing nature.
That such a course
brings with it a good
deal of monotony,
that it will hardly
ever be possible to
quicken art to this
extent with science,
is incontestable.
But it is just as cer-
tain that Seurat was
a painter of distinc-
tion who shows in many of his pictures a fine sense for delicate,
pale atmosphere. Many of his landscapes, which at close quarters
look like mosaics of small, smooth, variously coloured stones,
acquire a vibrating light such as Monet himself did not attain
when looked at . from a proper distance. Signac^ Anquetitty
Angrandy and Lucien Pissarro are the names of the other repre-
sentatives of this scientific painting, and their method has not
seldom enabled them to give expression in an overpowering
manner to the quiet of water and sky, the green of the meadows
and the softness of tender light shifting over the sea.
Amongst the younger painters exhibiting in the Salon,
/^^/«/^//«— without any trace of imitation — perhaps comes nearest
to the tender poetry of Corot, and has with most subtilty
interpreted the delicate charm of cold moods of morning, the
deep feeling of still solitude in a wide expanse. Jan Monchablon
views the meadow and the grass, the blades and variegated
flowers of the field, with the eyes of a primitive artist Wide
stretches of rolling ground upon radiant spring days are usually
to be seen in his pictures. The sun shines, the grass sparkles,
and the horizon spreads boundless around. In the background
cows are grazing, or there move small figures bathed in air.
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MODERN PAINTING
GoM. diM Btaux-Arta.l {F. Miliu» sc,
Dagnan-Bouveret : " The Nuptial BENEDicribN.**
iBy permission of Messrs, Boussod, Vuladon cS* Co., ths owners of iht copyright.)
whilst a dreamy rivulet murmurs in the foreground. The
bright, soft light of Provence is the delight of Montenard, and
he depicts with delicacy this landscape with its bright, rosy
hills, its azure sky, and its pale underwood. Light, as he sees
it, has neither motes nor shadows ; its vibration is so intense
and fine that it fills the air with liquid gold, and absorbs the
tints of objects, wrapping them in a soft and mystic golden veil.
Dauphin^ who is nearly allied with him, always remains a
colourist His painting is more animated, provocative, and
blooming, especially in those sea-pieces with their bright har-
bours, glittering waves, and rocking ships, whose sails have a
coquettish sparkle in the sunshine. The name of Rosset-Granget
recalls festal evenings, bright houses vivid with the glow of
lights and fireworks, or the gleam of red lanterns illuminating
the dark blue firmament, and reflected by a thousand fine tints
in the sea.
The melancholy art of Entile Barau^ a thoroughly rustic
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FRANCE 53
painter, who renders picturesque corners of little villages with
an extremely personal accent, stands in contrast with the blithe
painting of the devotees of light ; it is not the splendour of
colour that attracts him, but the dun hues of dying nature. He
has come to a halt immediately in front of Paris, in the square
before the church of Creile. He knows the loneliness of village
streets when the people are at work in the fields, and the houses
give a feeling that their inhabitants are not far off and may
return at any moment. His pictures are harmonies in grey. The
leading elements in his works are the pale light lying upon
colourless autumn sward, the mournful outlines of leafless trees
stretching their naked boughs into the air as though complaining,
small still ponds where ducks are paddling, the scanty green
of meagre gardens, the muddy water of old canals, reddish-grey
roofs and narrow little streets amid moss-covered hills, tall
poplars and willows by the side of swampy ditches, and in
the background the old village steeple, which is scarcely ever
absent. Danioye^ likewise, is fond of twilight, and autumn
and winter evenings. He is the poet of the great plains and
dunes and the sombre heaven, where isolated sunbeams break
shyly from behind white clouds. A fine sea-painter, Boudifty
studies in Etretat, Trouville, Saint Valery, Crotoy, and Berck
the dunes and the misty sky, spreading in cold northern grey
across the silent sea. Dumoulin paints night landscapes with
deep blue shadows and bright blue lights, while Albert Lebourg
has a passion for the grey of rain and the glittering snow
which gleams in the light, blue in one place, violet and rosy in
another. Victor Binet and Rirti Billotte have devoted themselves
to the study of that poor region, still in embryo, which lies
around Paris, a region where a delicate observer finds so much
that is pictorial and so much hidden poetry. Binet is so
delicate that everything grows nobler beneath his brush. He
specially loves to paint the poetry of twilight, which softens
forms and tinges the trees with a greyish green, the quiet,
monotonous plains, where tiny field-paths lose themselves in
mysterious horizons, expiring light of the autumn sun playing
with the fallen yellow leaves upon dusty highways. R6n6
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MODERN PAINTING
Billotte's life' is exceed-
ingly many-sided. In
the forenoon he is an
important ministerial
official, in the evening
the polished man of
society in dress-clothes
and white tie whom
Carolus Duran painted.
Of an afternoon, in
the hours of dusk and
moonrise, he roams as
a landscape-painter in
the suburbs of Paris :
he is an exceedingly
accomplished man of
the world, who only
speaks in a low tone,
and what he specially
loves in nature, too, is
the hour when moonlight lies gently and delicately over all
forms. The scenes he usually chooses are a quarry with light
mist settling over it, a light-coloured cornfield in a bluish dusk,
a meadow bathed in pale light, or a strip of the seashore where
the delicate air is impregnated with moisture.
To be at once refined and true is the aim which portrait-
painting in recent years has also specially set itself to reach.
In the years of chic it started with the endeavour to win
from every personality its beauties, to paint men and women
" to advantage ; " but , later, when the Naturalism of Bastien-
Lepage stood at its zenith, it strove at all costs to seize the
actual human being, to catch, as it were, the workaday char-
acter of the personality, as it is in involuntary moments when
people believe themselves to be unobserved and give up posing.
The place of those pompous arrangements of the painters of
material was taken by a soul, and temperament interpreted by
an intelligence. And corresponding with the universal principle
LuciEN PissARRO : "Soutude" (Woodcut).
(fly permission of ths proprigtors of th$ Dial, ths ovmers of
ths copyright.)
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FRANCE
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LuciEN PissARRo: "Ruth" (Woodcut).
(By permission of Messrs, Hacon and Rickgt/s, tht
owners of the copyright.)
of conceiving man and
nature as an indivisible
whole, it became im-
perative in portrait-
painting no longer to
place persons before an
arbitrary background,
but in their real sur-
roundings — to paint
the man of science
in his laboratory, the
painter in his studio,
the author at his work-
table — and to observe
with accuracy the at-
mospheric influences of
this environment.
The ready master-
worker of this plain
and sincere naturalism in portrait-painting was peculiarly Fantin"
Laiour, who ought not merely to be judged by his latest paintings,
which have something petrified, rigid, gloomy, and professorial.
In his younger days he was a solid and powerful artist, one
of the soundest and simplest of whom France could boast His
pictures were dark in tone and harmonious, and had a puritanic
charm. The portrait of Manet, and the double likeness of the
engraver Edwin Edwards and his wife, in particular, will always
preserve their historical value.
Later, when the whole bias of art was to turn away from the
poorer classes and once more approach this fashionable world,
portrait-painting also tended to become exquisite and over-refined
and to show a preference for symphonic arrangements of colour
and subtilized effects of light White, light yellow, and light
blue silks were harmonized upon very delicate scales with pearly-
grey backgrounds. Ladies in mantles of light grey fur and
rosy dresses stand amid dark-green shrubs, in which rose-coloured
lanterns are burning, or they sit in a ball-dress near a lamp.
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MODERN FAINTING
«r^"-—
BouDiN : •' The Port of Trouvillk.'*
iBy p^rmistion of Mona, Durand-Rutlf tht onmtrofiht copyright.)
[Laus€t sc.
which produces the most tender and manifold transformations
of light upon the white of the silk.
The work of Jacques Emile Blanche^ the son of the celebrated
doctor for the mad, is peculiarly characteristic of these new
tendencies of French portrait-painting. It is well known that
English fashion was at this time regarded in Paris as the height
of elegance, while Anglicisms were entering more and more
into the French language ; and this tendency of taste gave Blanche
the occasion for most aesthetic pictures. The English miss, in
her attractive mixture of affectation and natvet^, in all her slim
and long-footed grace, has found a delicate interpreter in him.
Tall ladies clad in white, bitten with the Anglo-mania, drink
tea most aesthetically and sit there bored, or are grouped
round the piano ; gommeux, neat, straight, chic^ from their tall
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FRANCE
57
hats to their shining leather
boots, look wearily about
the world, with an eyeglass
fixed, a yellow rose in their
buttonhole, and a thick
stick in the gloved hand.
Amongst his likenesses of
well - known personalities,
much notice was attracted
by that of his father in
1890 — a modern Bertinthe
Elder— and in 1891 by that
of Maurice Barres, a por-
trait in which he has
analyzed the author of Le
Jardin de BMnice in a
very simple and convincing
fashion.
The brilliant Italian
Boldini brought to this
English chic the manual volubility of a Southerner : sometimes
he was microscopic d la Meissonier, sometimes a juggler of
the brush a la Fortuny, and sometimes he gave the most
seductive mannerism and the most diverting elegance to his
portraits of ladies. Bora in 1845, the son of a painter of
saints, Boldini had b^un as a Romanticist with pictures for
Scott's Ivanho^, From Ferrara he went to Florence, where he
remained six years. At the end of the sixties he emerged in
London, and, after he had painted Lady Holland and the
Duchess of Westminster there, he soon became a popular por-
trait-painter. But since 1872 his home has been Paris, where
the fine Anglo-Saxon aroma, the "aei^thetic" originality of his
pictures, soon became an object of universal admiration. In his
portraits of women Boldini always renders what is most noveL
It is as if he knew in advance the new fashion which the coming
season would bring. His trenchantly cut figures of ladies in
white dresses and with black gloves have a defiant and insolent
VOL. III. 5
Paris : Boussod-Valadon,] [Carolus Duranfixi.
Rini. BiLLOTTE.
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58
MODERN PAINTING
efifect, and yet one
which is captivating
through their ultra-
modern chic. The
portraits of Carolus
Duran have nothing
of that charm which
makes such an appeal
to the nerves, nothing
of that discomposJHg
indefinable quality
which lies in the
expression and ges-
tures of a fashionable
woman, whose eccen-
tricity reveals every
day fresh nuances of
beauty. He had not
the faculty of seizing
movement, the most
difficult element in the world. But Boldini's pictures seem like
bold and sudden fetches which clench thq conception with spirit
and swiftness in liberal, pointed crayon strokes controlled by keen
observation. There is no ornament, no bracelet, no pillars and
drapery. One hears the silken bodies rustle over the tightly
laced corset, sees the mobile foot, and the long train swept to
the side with a bold movement. Sometimes his creations are
full and luxuriant, nude even in their clothes, excited and full
of movement ; sometimes they are bodiless, as if compact of the
air, pallid and half-dead with the exertion caused by nights of
festivity, "living with hardly any blood in their veins where the
pulse beats almost entirely out of complaisance."
His pictures of children are just as subtile: there is an elasticity
in these little girls, with their widely opened velvet eyes, their
rosy young lips, and their poses calculated with so much coquetry.
Boldini has an indescribable method of seizing a motion of the
head, a mien, or a passing flash of the eyes, of arranging the
L'Art franfais,\
BiLLOTTE : " Paris Twilight."
{By permission of iht Artist.)
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FRANCE
59
VArt.'\ \Paul Lafond ac.
BoLDiNi : Giuseppe Verdi.
hair, of indicating coquettish
lace underclothing beneath
bright silk dresses, or of show-
ing the grace and fineness of
the slender leg of a girl, encased
in a black silk stocking, and
dangling in delicate lines from
a light grey sofa. There is
French esprit^ something piquant
and with a double meaning in
his art, which borders on the
indecorous and is yet charming.
These portraits of ladies, how-
ever, form but a small portion
of his work. He paints in oils,
in water-colour, and pastel, and
is equally marvellous in handling the portraits of men, the street
picture, and the landscape. His portrait of the painter John
Lewis Brown, crossing the street with his wife and daughter,
looked as though it had been painted in one jet In his little
pictures of horses there is an astonishing animation and nervous
energy. M. Faure, the singer, possesses some small Rococo
pictures from his brush, scenes in the Garden of the Tuilerics,
which might have come from Fortuny. His pictures from the
street-life of Paris — the Place Pigalle, the Place Clichy — recall
De Nittis, and some illustrations — scenes from the great Paris
races — might have been drawn by Caran D'Ache.
There is no need to treat illustration in greater detail, because,
naturally, it could no longer play the initiative part which fell
to it in earlier days, now that the whole of life had been drawn
within the compass of pictorial representation. Besides, in an
epoch like our own, which is determined to know, and see, and feel
everything, illustration has been so extended that it would be
quite impossible even to select the most important work. En-
tirely apart from the many painters who occasionally illustrated
novels or other books, such as Bastien- Lepage, Gervex, Dantan,
D^taille, Dagnan-Bouveret, Ribot, Benjamin Constant, Jean
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MODERN PAINTING
Paul Laurens, and others,
there are a number of
professional draughtsmen
in Paris, most of whom are
really distinguished artists.
In particular, Cli^ret,
one of the most original
artists of our time— Ch^ret,
the great king of posters,
the monarch of a fabu-
lously charming world, in
which everything gleams
in blue and red and
orange, cannot be passed
over in a history of paints
ing. The flowers which
he carelessly strews on all
sides with his spendthrift
hand are not destined for
preservation in an his-
torical herbarium ; his
works are transient flashes
of spirit, brilliantly shining
ephemeras, but a bold and
subtile Parisian art is con-
cealed amid this improvi-
sation. Settled for many
years in London, Jules Ch6ret had there already drawn admirable
placards, which are now much sought after by collectors.
In 1866 he introduced this novel branch of industry into
I ranee, and gave it — thanks to the invention of machines which
admit of the employment of the largest lithographical blocks —
an artistic development which could not have been anticipated.
He has created many thousands of placards. The book-lrade,
the great shops, and almost all branches of industry owe their
success to him. His theatrical posters alone are amongst the
most graceful products of modern art : La Fete des Mitrons,
Paris: Goupii.}
BoLDiNi : Portrait of a Boy.
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61
La Salle de Frascati, Les
MongoHs, Le Chat Bott^,
L'Ath^n^e Comique, Fan-
taisies Music-Hail, La F^e
Cocotte, Les Tsiganes, Les
Folies-Bergferes en Voy-
age, Spectacle Concert de
VHorloge, Skating Rink,
Les Pillules du Diable, La
Chatte Blanche, Le Petit
Faust, La Vie Parisienne,
Le Droit du Seigneur,
Cendrillon, Orph^e aux
Enfers, Eden Theitre, etc.
These are mere placards,
destined to hang for a. few
days on the street pillars,
and yet in graceful ease,
sparkling life, and coquet-
tish bloom of colour they
surpass many oil-paintings
which flaunt upon the walls
of the Mus6e Luxembourg.
Amongst the illustra-
tors WiUette is perhaps the
most charming, the most
brilliant in grace, fancy,
and spirit. A drawing by
him is something living, light, and fresh. Only amongst the
Japanese, or the great draughtsmen of the Rococo period, does
one find plates of a charm similar to Willette's tender poems
of the " Chevalier Printemps " or the " Baiser de la Rose." At
the same time there is something curiously innocent, something
primitive, naive, something like the song of a bird, in his
charming art. No one can laugh with such youthful freshness.
No one has such a childlike fancy. WiUette possesses the
curious gift of looking at the world like a boy of sixteen, with
L'Art franfais.]
BoLDiNi : Portrait of a Little Girl.
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62
MODERN PAINTING
eyes that are not jaded for
all the beauty of things,
with the eyes of a school-
boy in love for the first
time. He has drawn
angels for Gothic windows,
battles, and everything
imaginable ; nevertheless
woman is supreme over
his whole work, ruined
and pure as an angel,
cursed and adored, and
yet always enchanting.
She is Manon Lescaut,
with her soft eyes and
angelically pure sins. She
has something of the
lovely piquancy of the
woman of Brantdme,
when she disdainfully
laughs out of countenance
poor Pierrot, who sings
his serenades to her plain-
tively in the moonshine*
One might say that Wil-
lette is himself his Pierrot^
dazzled by the young
bosoms and rosy lips : at
one time graceful and
laughing, wild as a young fellow who has just escaped from
school ; at another earnest and angry, like an archangel
driving away the sinful ; to-day fiery, and to-morrow melan-
choly; now in love, teasing, blithe and tender, now gloomy
and in mortal trouble. He laughs amid tears and weeps amid
laughter, singing the Dies Irce after a couplet of Offenbach ;
himself wears a black-and-white garment, and is, at the same
time, mystic and sensuous. His plates are as exhilarating as
L'Art franfaisJ]
BOLDINI :
Portrait of a Lady.
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63
Willette: "The Golden Age.
sparkling champagne, and breathe the soft, plaintive spirit of
old ballads.
Beside this amiable Pierrot Forain is like the modern Satyr,
the true outcome of the Goncourts and Gavarni, the product of
the most modern decadence. All the vice and grace of Paris,
all the luxury of the world, and all the chic of the demi-monde
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64 MODERN PAINTING
he has drawn with spirit, with bold stenographical execution,
and the elegance of a sure-handed expert Every stroke is
made with trenchant energy and ultimate grace. Adultery,
gambling, chambres siparieSy carriages, horses, villas in the Bois
de Boulogne ; and then the reverse side — degradation, theft,
hunger, the filth of the streets, pistols, suicide, — such are the
principal stages of the modern epic which Forain composed ;
and over all the Parisienne, the dancing-girl, floats with smiling
grace like a breath of beauty. His chief field of study is the
promenade of the Folies-Bergferes — the delicate profiles of
anaemic girls singing, the heavy masses of flesh of gluttonizing
gourmets^ the impudent laughter and lifeless eyes of prosti-
tutes, the thin waists, lean arms, and demon hips of fading
bodies laced in silk. Little dancing-girls and fat rou^s, snobs
with short, wide overcoats, huge collars, and long, pointed shoes
—they all move, live, and exhale the odour of their own
peculiar atmosphere. There is spirit in the line of an overcoat
which Forain draws, in the furniture of a room, in the hang of
a fur or a silk dress. He is the master of the light, fleeting
seizure of the definitive line. Every one of his plates is like a
spirited causericy which is to be understood through hints and
the twinkling of the eyes.
The name of Paul Renouard is inseparable from the opera.
Degas had already painted the opera and the ballet-dancers
with wonderful reality, fine irony, or in the weird humour of a
dance of death. But Renouard did not imitate Degas. As a
pupil of Pils he was one of the many who, in 1871, were
occupied with the decoration of the staircase of the new opera
house, and through this opportunity he obtained his first glance
into this capricious and mysterious world made up of contrasts
— a world which henceforward became his domain. All his
ballet-dancers are accurately drawn at their rehearsals, but the
charm of their smile, of their figures, their silk tights, their
gracious movements, has something which almost goes beyond
nature. Renouard is a realist with very great taste. The
practising of girls standing on the tips of their toes, dancing,
curtseying, and throwing the public a kiss with their hands is
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FoRAiN : " At the Folies-BergIres."
{By permission oj Moms. Durand-Rtul, tht owner of the copyright.)
[Lau9et sc.
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FRANCE 67
broadly and surely drawn with a few strokes. The opera is for
him a universe in a nutshell — a rhumi of Paris, where all the
oddities, all the wildness, and all the sadness of modern life arc
to be found.
At the close mention must be made of Daniel Vierge, torn
prematurely from his art by a cruel disease, but not before he
had been able to complete his masterpiece, the edition of Don
Pablo de Segovia. By birth he was a Spaniard, his proper
name being Daniel Vierge Urrabieta. He, too, showed himself
a man of audacious, delicate talent of nervous fibre ; and his
illustrations in the Paris journals are uncommonly Parisian,
spirited, delicate, and piquant. Without striving after a "style,"
like Dor^, he expressed everything with a boldness and natural-
ness which lie miles apart from any kind of pedantry. He
cared chiefly to devote himself to the courtly eighteenth century,
the epoch of silk shoes, powder, and Brussels lace. Certain
of his plates almost recall Goya, or the exhilarating verve of
Fortuny.
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CHAPTER XXXV
SPAIN
From Goya to For tuny. —Mariano For tuny, —Official efforts for the cul-
tivation of historical fainting, — Influence of Manet inconsiderable,—
Even in their pictures front modern life the Spaniards remain
followers of Fortuny : Francisco Pradilla, Casado, Vera^ Manuel
Ramirez, Moreno CarbonerOy Ricardo VillodaSy Antonio Casanova
y Estorachy Benliure y Gily Checa, Francisco Amerigo, Viniegra y
Lasso, Mas y Fondevillay Alcazar Tejedor, Josi VillegaSy Luis
Jimenez, Martin Rico, Zamacois, Raimundo de Madrazo, Francisco
Domingo, Emilio Salay Francis, Antonio Fabris.
IT was in the spring of 1870 that a little picture called
" La Vicaria " was exhibited in Paris at the dealer Goupirs.
A marriage is taking place in the sacristy of a Rococo church
in Madrid. The walls are covered with faded Cordova leather
hangings figured in gold and dull colours, and a magnificent
Rococo screen separates the sacristy from the middle aisle.
Venetian lustres are suspended from the ceiling. And pictures
of martyrs, Venetian glasses in carved oval frames, richly orna-
mented wooden benches, and a library of missals and gospels
in sparkling silver clasps at the wall, form part of the scene
where the marriage contract is being signed ; shining marble
tables and glistening brasiers are around. The costumes are
those of the time of Goya. As a matter of fact an old beau
is marrying a young and beautiful girl. With affected grace
and in a skipping minuet step, holding a modish three-cornered
hat under his arm, he approaches the table to put his signature
in the place which the escribano points out with a submissive
bow. He is arrayed in delicate lilac, while the bride is wearing
a white silk dress trimmed with flowered lace, and has a wreath
68
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SPAIN 69
of orange blossoms in her luxuriant black hair. As a girl-
friend is talking to her she examines with abstracted attention
the pretty little pictures upon her fan, the finest which she has
ever possessed. A very piquant little head she has, with her
long lashes and her black eyes. Then, in the background, follow
the witnesses, and first of all a young lady in a swelling silk
dress of the brightest rose-colour. Beside her is one of the
bridegroom's friends in a cabbage-green coat with long flaps,
and a shining belt from which a gleaming sabre hangs. The
whole picture is a marvellous assemblage of colours, where tones
of Venetian glow and strength beside tender pearly grey, like
that of the Japanese, and a melting neutral brown, stand
scintillating together.
The painter, who was barely thirty, bore the name of Mariano
Fortuny, and was born in Reus, a little town in the province of
Tarragonia, on June nth, 1838. Five years after he had com-
pleted this work he died, at the age of thirty-six, on November 21st,
1874. Short as his career was, it was, nevertheless, so brilliant,
his success so immense, his influence so great, that his place in
the history of modern painting remains assured to him.
Like French art, Spanish art, after Goya's death, had borne
the yoke of Classicism, Romanticism, and academical influence
by turns. In the grave of Goya there was buried for ever,
as it seemed, the world of torreros, majas, manolas, monks,
smugglers, knaves, and witches, and all the local colour of the
Spanish Peninsula. As late as the Paris World Exhibition of
1867, Spain was merely represented by a few carefully composed,
and just as carefully painted, but tame and tedious, historical
pictures of the David or the Delaroche stamp — works such as
had been painted for whole decades by Jos^ Madrazo, J. Ribera
y Fernandez, Federigo Madrazo, Carlo Luis Ribera, Eduardo
Rosales, and many others whose names there is no reason for
rescuing from oblivion. They laboured, meditating an art which
was not their own, and could not waken any echo in them-
selves. Their painting was body without soul, empty histrionic
skill. As complete darkness had rested for a century over
Spanish art, from the death of Claudio Coellos in 1693 to the
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70
MODERN PAINTING
LArU-\
Mariano Fortuny.
appearance of Goya, rising like
a meteor, so the first half of
the nineteenth century produced
no single original artist until
Fortuny came forward in the
sixties.
He grew up amid poor sur-
roundings, and when he was
twelve years of age he lost his
father and mother. His grand-
father, an enterprising and
adventurous joiner, had made
for himself a cabinet of wax
figures, which he exhibited
from town to town in the
province of Tarragonia. With his grandson he went on foot
through all the towns of Catalonia, the old man showing the
wax figures which the boy painted. Whenever he had a
moment free the latter was drawing, carving in wood, and
modelling in wax. It chanced, however, that a sculptor saw his
attempts, spoke of them in Fortuny's birthplace, and succeeded
in inducing the town to make an allowance of forty-two francs
a month to a lad whose talent had so much promise. By these
means Fortuny was enabled to attend the Academy of Barcelona
during four years. In 1857, when he was nineteen years of age,
he received the Prix de Rome^ and set out for Rome itself in
the same year. But whilst he was copying the pictures of the
old masters there, a circumstance occurred which set him upon
another course. The war between Spain and the Emperor of
Morocco determined his future career. Fortuny was then a
young man of three-and-twenty, very strong, rather thickset,
quick to resent an injury, taciturn, resolute, and habituated to
exertion. His residence in the East, which lasted from five to
six months, was a discovery for him — a feast of delight. He
found the opportunity of studying in the immediate neighbour-
hood a people whose life was opulent in colour and wild in
movement ; and he beheld with wonder the gleaming pictorial
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71
J
\
^ *^.w ^ . -
w.
III . >^'
^
T{
^j4 ;
.vll^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^T^^^^^p ■Fi^^^ '
Paris: Boussod-Valadon.']
Fortuny: "The Spanish Marriage."
(By permission of Messrs, BoMSSod, Valachn cS* Co., the owners of the copyright,)
episodes so variously enacted before him, and the rich costumes
upon which the radiance of the South glanced in a hundred
reflections. And, in particular, when the Emperor of Morocco
came with his brilliant suite to sign the treaty of peace, Fortuny
developed a feverish activity. The great battle-piece which he
should have executed on the commission of the Academy of
Barcelona remained unfinished. On the other hand, he painted
a series of Oriental pictures, in which his astonishing dexterity
and his marvellously sensitive eye were already to be clearly
discerned : the stalls of Moorish carpet-sellers, with little figures
swarming about them, and the rich display of woven stuffs of the
East ; the weary attitude of old Arabs sitting in the sun ; the
sombre, brooding faces of strange snake-charmers and magicians.
This is no Parisian East, like Fromentin's ; every one here is
speaking Arabic. It is only Guillaumet who afterwards inter-
preted the fakir world of the East, dreamy and contemplative in
the sunshine, in a manner equally convincing.
Yet Fortuny first discovered his peculiar province when he
began, after his return, to paint those brilliant kaleidoscopic
Rococo pictures with their charming play of colour, the pictures
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72
MODERN PAINTING
VArt,]
Fortuny: '< Moors playing with a Vulture.'
[Champollion i
which founded his reputation in Paris. Even in the earliest,
representing gentlemen of the Rococo period examining engrav-
ings in a richly appointed interior, the Japanese weapons, Renais-
sance chests, gilded frames of carved wood, and all the delightful
petit-riens from the treasury of the past which he had heaped
in it together, were so wonderfully painted that Goupil began
a connection with him and ordered further works. This commis-
sion occasioned his journey, in the autumn of 1866, to Paris,
where he entered into Meissonier's circle, and worked sometimes
at G6r6me*s. Yet neither of them exerted any influence upon
him at all worth mentioning. The French painter in miniature
is, probably, the father of the department of art to which
F^ortuny belongs ; but the latter united to the delicate execution
of the Frenchman the flashing, gleaming spirit of the Latin
races of the South. He is a Meissonier with esprit recalling
Goya. In his picture " The Spanish Marriage " (La Vicaria), all
the vivid, throbbing. Rococo world, buried with Goya, revived
once more. While in his Oriental pieces— -"The Praying Arab,''
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SPAIN
73
Qnm., d^ Bta>a^Atti.\
IHntft'm if-
FoRTUNY : •• The Snake-Charmers.'^
"The Arabian Fantasia," and **The Snake-Charmers " — he still
aimed at concentration and unity of effect, this picture had
something gleaming, iridescent, and pearly which soon became
the delight of all collectors. Fortuny's successes, his celebrity,
and his fortune dated from that time. His name went up like
a meteor. After fighting long years in vain, not for recognition,
but for his very bread, he suddenly became the most honoured
painter of the day, and began to exert upon a whole generation
of young artists that powerful influence which survives even at
this very day.
The studio which he built for himself after his marriage
with the daughter of Federigo Madrazo in Rome was a little
museum of the most exquisite products of the artistic crafts of
the West and the East: the walls were decorated with brilliant
Oriental stuffs, and great glass cabinets with Moorish and
Arabian weapons, and old tankards and glasses from Murano
stood around. He sought and collected everything that shines
and gleams in varying colour. That was his world, and the
basis of his art.
Pillars of marble and porphyry, groups of ivory and bronze,
lustres of Venetian glass, gilded consoles with small busts, great
tables supported by gilded satyrs and inlaid with variegated
mosaics, form the surroundings of that astonishing work "The
Trial of the Model." Upon a marble table a young girl is
VOL. III. 6
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MODERN PAINTING
[Champoiiion sc,
FoRTUNY : " The Trial of the Model."
(By permission of Messrs. Boussod, Valadon <S» Co., the owners of the copyright,)
Standing naked, posing before a row of academicians in the
costume of the Louis XV. period, while each one of them gives
his judgment by a movement or an expression of the face. One
of them has approached quite close and is examining the little
woman through his lorgnette. All the costumes gleam in a
thousand hues which the marble reflects. By his picture "The
Poet" or "The Rehearsal," he reached his highest point in the
capricious analysis of light. In an old Rococo garden, with
the brilliant facade of the Alhambra as its background, there is
a gathering of gentlemen assembled to witness the rehearsal of
a tragedy. The heroine, a tall, charming, luxuriant beauty, has
just fallen into a faint. On the other hand the hero, holding
the lady on his right arm, is reading the verses of his part
from a large manuscript. The gentlemen are listening and
exchanging remarks with the air of connoisseurs ; one of them
closes his eyes to listen with thorough attention. Here the
entire painting flashes like a rocket, and is iridescent and bril-
liant like a peacock^s tail. Fortuny splits the rays of the sun
into endless nuances which are scarcely perceptible to the eye,
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SPAIN
IS
Paris: Boussod-Valadon.\
FoRTUNY : •* The Rehearsal."
and gives expression to their flashing glitter with astonishing
delicacy. Henri Regnault, who visited him at that time in
Rome, wrote to a Parisian friend : " The time I spent with
Fortuny yesterday is haunting me still. What a magnificent
fellow he is! He paints the most marvellous things and is the
master of us all. I wish I could show you the two or three
pictures that he has in hand, or his etchings and water-colours.
They inspired me with a real disgust of my own. Ah ! Fortuny,
you spoil my sleep."
Even as an etcher he caught all the technical finesses and
appetizing piquancies of his great forerunner Goya. It is
only with very light and spirited strokes that the outlines of
his figures are drawn ; then, as in Goya, comes the aquatint, the
colour which covers the background and gives locality, depth,
and light. A few scratches with a needle, a black spot, a light
made by a judiciously inserted patch of white, and he gives his
figures life and character, causing them to emerge from the
black depth of the background like mysterious visions. "The
Dead Arab," covered with his black cloak, and lying on the
ground with his musket on his arm, " The Shepherd " on the
stump of a pillar, " The Serenade," " The Reader," " The Tam-
bourine Player," "The Pensioner," the picture of the gentleman
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76
MODERN PAINTING ^
UAri.^
with a pig-tail bending
over his flowers, " The
Anchorite," and " The
Arab mourning over the
Body of his Friend," are
the most important of his
plates, which are some-
times pungent and spirited,
and sometimes sombre and
fantastic.
In the picture "The
Strand of Portici " he at-
tempted to strike out a
new path. He was tired
of the gay rags of the
eighteenth century, as he
said himself, and meant to
paint for the future only
subjects from surrounding
life in an entirely modern
manner like that of Manet. But he was not destined to carry
out this change any further. He passed away in Rome on
November 2 1st, 1874. When the unsold works which he left
were put up to auction the smallest sketches fetched high figures,
and even his etchings were bought at marvellous prices.
In these days the enthusiasm for Fortuny is no longer so
glowing. The capacity to paint became so ordinary in the
course of years that it was presupposed as a matter of course ;
it was a necessary acquirement for an artist to have before
approaching his pictures in a psychological fashion. And in
this latter respect there is a deficiency in Fortuny. He is a
channeur who dazzles the eyes, but rather creates a sense
of astonishment than holds the spectator in his grip. Beneath
his hands painting has become a matter of pure virtuosity, a
marvellous, flaring firework that amazes and — leaves us cold
after all. With enchanting delicacy he runs through the
brilliant gamut of radiant colours upon the small keyboard
Fortuny :
[Waltnersc.
'The China Vase/'
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SPAIN 77
of his little pictures painted with a pocket-lens, and everything
glitters golden, like the dress of a fairy. To the patience of
Meissonier he united a delicacy of colour, a wealth of pictorial
point, and a crowd of delightful trifles, which combine to
make him the most exquisite and fascinating juggler of the
pallet — an amazing colourist, a wonderful clown, an original
and subtile painter with vibrating nerves, but not a truly great
and moving artist. His pictures are dainties in gold frames,
jewels delicately set, astonishing efforts of patience, broken by
a flashing, rocket-like esprit ; but beneath the glittering surface
one is conscious of there being neither heart nor soul. His
art might have been French or Italian, just as appropriately as
Spanish. It is the art of virtuosos of the brush, and Fortuny
himself is the initiator of a religion which found its enthusiastic
followers, not in Madrid alone, but in Naples, Paris, and Rome.
Yet Spanish painting, so far as it is individual, works even
now upon the lines of Fortuny. After his death it divided
into two streams. The official endeavour of the academies was
to keep the grand historical painting in flower, in accord with
the proud programme announced by Francisco Tubino in his
brochure The Renaissance of Spanish Art. "Our contem-
porary artists," he writes, " fill all civilized Europe with their
fame, and are the object of admiration on the far side of the
Atlantic. We have a peculiar school of our own with a
hundred teachers, and it shuns comparison with no school in
any other country. At home the Academy of the Fine Arts
watches over the progress of painting ; it has perfected the
laws by which our Academy in Rome is guided, the Academy
in the proud possession of Spain and situated so splendidly
upon the Janiculum. In Madrid there is a succession of biennial
exhibitions, and there is no deficiency in prizes nor in purchases.
Spanish painting does not merely adorn the citizen's house or the
boudoir of the fair sex with easel-pieces; by its productions it
recalls the great episodes of popular history, which are able to
excite men to glorious deeds. Austere, like our national character,
it forbids fine taste to descend to the painting of anything
indecorous. Before everything we want grand paintings for our
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78 MODERN PAINTING
galleries ; the commercial spirit is no master of ours. In such
a way the glory of Zurburan, Murillo, and Velasquez lives once
more in a new sense."
The results of such efforts were those historical pictures which
at the Paris World Exhibition of 1878, the Munich International
Exhibition of 1883, and at every larger exhibition since became
so exceedingly refreshing to all admirers of the illustration of
history upon ground that was genuinely Spanish. At the Paris
World Exhibition of 1878, Pradilla's "Joan .the Mad" received
the large gold medal, and was indeed a good picture in the
manner of Laurens. Philip the Fair is dead. The funereal
train, paying him the last honours, has come to a halt upon a
high-road, and the unhappy princess rushes up with floating hair
and staring eyes fixed upon the bier which hides the remains
of her husband. The priests and women kneeling around regard
the unfortunate mad woman with mournful pity. To the right
the members of the Court are grouped near a little chapel where
a priest is celebrating a mass for the dead; to the left the peasantry
are crowding round to witness the ceremony. Great wax candles
are burning, and the chapel is lit up with the sombre glow of
torches. This was all exceedingly well painted, carefully balanced
in composition, and graceful in drawing. At the Munich Ex-
hibition of 1883 he received the gold medal for his "Surrender
of Granada, 1492," a picture which made a great impression at
the time upon the German historical painters, as Pradilla had
made a transition from the brown bituminous painting of Laurens
to a " modern " painting in grey, which did more justice to the
illumination of objects beneath the open sky. In the same year
Casadds large painting " The Bells of Huesca," with the ground
streaming with blood, fifteen decapitated bodies and as many
bodiless heads, was a creation which was widely admired. Vera
had exhibited his picture, filled with wild fire and pathos, " The
Defence of Numantia," and Manuel Ramirez his " Execution of
Don Alvaro de Luna," with the pallid head which has rolled
from the steps and stares at the spectator in such a ghastly
manner. In his " Conversion of the Duke of Gandia," Moreno
Carbonero displayed an open coffin d la Laurens : as Grand
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SPAIN
8i
Equerry to the Empress
Isabella at the Court of
Charles V., the Duke of
Gandia, after the death
of his mistress, has to
superintend the burial of
her corpse in the vault at
Granada, and as the coffin
is opened there, to confirm
the identity of the person,
the distorted features of
the dead make such a
powerful impression upon
the careless noble that
he takes a vow to devote
himself to God. Ricardo
VUlodas in his picture
" Victoribus Gloria " re-
presents the beginning ol
one of those sea-battles
which Augustus made gladiators fight for the amusement of the
Roman people. By Antonio Casanova y Estorach there was
a picture of King Ferdinand the Holy, who upon Maundy
Thursday is washing the feet of eleven poor old men and
giving them food. And a special sensation was made by the
great ghost picture of Benliure y Gil, which he named "A
Vision in the Colosseum." Saint Almaquio, who was slain,
according to tradition, by gladiators in the Colosseum, is seen
floating in the air, as he swings in fanatical ecstasy a crucifix
from which light is streaming. Upon one side men who have
borne witness to Christianity with their blood chant their
hymns of praise ; upon the other troops of female martyrs
clothed in white and holding tapers in their hands move by ;
but below the earth has opened and the dead rise for
the celebration of this midnight service, praying from their
graves, while the full moon shines through the windows of the
ruins and pours its pale light upon the phantom congregation.
Pradilla: a Fresco at the Murga Palace.
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MODERN PAINTING
Anftai UHMftt Z4i/,]
Fradilla: "On the Beach.*^
Ha»^/>taH^i htJitt,
There was exhibited by CAeca "A Barbarian Onset," a Gallic
horde of riders thundering past a Roman temple, from which
the priestesses are flying in desperation. Francisco Amerigo
treated upon a huge canvas a scene from the sacking of Rome
in 1527, when the despoiling troops of Charles V. plundered
the Eternal City. " Soldiers intoxicated with wine and lust,
tricked out with bishops* mitres and wrapped in the robes of
priests, are desecrating the temples of God. Nunneries are
violated, and fathers kill their daughters to save them from
shame." So ran the historical explanation set upon the broad
gold frame.
But, after all, these historical pictures, in spite of their great
spaces of canvas, are of no consequence when one comes to
characterize the efforts of modern art. Explanations could be
given showing that in the land of bull-fights this painting of
horrors maintained itself longer than elsewhere, but the hopes
of those who prophesied from it a new golden period for
historical painting were entirely disappointed. For Spanish art,
as in earlier days for French art, the historical picture has
merely the importance implied by the Prix de Rome, A
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SPAIN 83
method of colouring which is often dazzling in result, and
a vigorous study of nature, preserved from the danger of
"beautiful" tinting, make the Spanish works different from the
older ones. Their very passion often has an effect which is
genuine, brutal, and of telling power. In the best of these
pictures one believes that a wild temperament really does burst
in flame through the accepted convention that the painters
have delight in the horrible, which the older French artists
resorted to merely for the purpose of preparing veritable tableaux.
But in the rank and file, in place of the Southern vividness of
expression which has been sincerely felt, histrionic pose is the
predominant element, the petty situation of the stage set upon
a gigantic canvas, and in addition to this a straining after effect
which grazes the boundary line where the horrible degenerates
into the ridiculous. Through their extraordinary ability they
all compel respect, but they have not enriched the treasury of
modem emotion, nor have they transformed the older historical
painting in the essence of its being. And the man who handles
again and again motives derived from what happens to be the
mode in colours renders no service to art. Delaroche is dead ;
but though he may be disinterred he cannot be brought to
life, and the Spaniards merely dug out of the earth mummies
in which the breath of life was wanting. Their works are
not guide-posts to the future, but the last revenants of that
histrionic spirit which wandered like a ghost through the art
of all nations. Even the composition, the shining colours, the
settles and carpets picturesquely spread upon the ground, are
the same as in Gallait. How often have these precious stage-
properties done duty in tragic funereal service since Delaroche's
" Murder of the Duke of Guise " and Piloty's " Seni " !
And these conceptions nourished upon historical painting had
an injurious influence upon the handling of the modern picture
of the period. Even here there is an endeavour to make a
compromise with the traditional historic picture, since artists
painted scenes from modern popular life upon great spaces of
canvas, transforming them into pageants or pictures of tragical
ceremonies, and sought too much after subjects with which
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MODERN PAINTING
ViLi.EGAs: "The Death or the Matador.
the splendid and motley colours of historical painting would
accord. Viniegra y Lasso and Mas y Fondevilla execute great
processions filing past, with bishops, monks, priests, and choristers.
All the figures stand beaming in brightness against the sky, but
the light glances from the oily mantles of the figures without
real effect. Alcazar Tejedor paints a young priest reading his
" First Mass " in the presence of his parents, and merely renders
a theatrical scene in modem costume, merely transfers to an
event of the present that familiar " moment of highest excite-
ment" so popular since the time of Delaroche. By his "Death
of the Matador," and " The Christening," bought by Vanderbilt
for a hundred and fifty thousand francs, Josi Villegas, in ability
the most striking of them all, acquired a European name ;
whilst a hospital scene by Luis Jimenez of Seville is the
Sringle picture in which something of the seriousness of French
Naturalism is perceptible, but it is an isolated example from a
province of interest which is otherwise not to be found in
Spain.
Indeed the Spaniards are by no means most attractive in
gravely ceremonial and stiffly dignified pictures, but rather
when they indulge in unpretentious " little painting " in the
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manner of Fortuny. Yet even these wayward " little painters/*
with their varied glancing colour, are not to be properly reckoned
amongst the moderns. Their painting is an art dependent on
deftness of hand, and knows no higher aim than to bring
together in a picture as many brilliant things as possible, to
make a charming bouquet with glancing effects of costume,
and the play, the reflections, and the caprices of sunbeams.
The earnest modern art which sprang from Manet and the
Fontainebleau painters avoids this kaleidoscopic sport with varied
spots of colour. All these little folds and mouldings, these
prismatic arts of blending, and these curious reflections are
what the moderns have no desire to see : they blink their eyes
to gain a clearer conception of the chief values ; they simplify ;
they refuse to be led from the main point by a thousand trifles.
Their pictures are works of art, while those of the disciples of
Fortuny are sleights of artifice. In all this bric-d-brac art there
is no question of any earnest analysis of light. The motley
spots of colour yield, no doubt, a certain concord of their own ;
but there is a want of tone and air, a want of all finer senti-
ment : everything seems to have been dyed, instead of giving
the effect of colour. Nevertheless those who were independent
enough not to let themselves be entirely bewitched by the de-
ceptive adroitness of a conjurer have painted little pictures of
talent and refinement; taking Fortuny's Rococo works as their
starting-point, they have represented the fashionable world and
the highly coloured and warm-blooded life of the people of
modem Spain with a bold and spirited facility. But they have
not gone beyond the observation of the external sides of life.
They can show guitarreros clattering with castanets and pan-
darets, majas dancing, and ribboned heroes conquering bulls
instead of Jews and Moors. Yet their pictures are at an) rate
blithe, full of colour, flashing with sensuous brilliancy, and at
times they are executed with stupendous skill.
Martin Rico was for the longest period in Italy with Fortuny,.
and his pictures also have the glitter of a casket of jewels, the
pungency of sparkling champagne. Some of his sea-pieces,
in particular — for instance, those of the canal in Venice and
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86 MODERN PAINTING
the Bay of Fontarabia — might have been painted by Fortuny.
In others he seems quieter and more harmonious than the
latter. His execution is more powerful, less marked by spirited
stippling, and his light gains in intensity and atmospheric
refinement what it loses in mocking caprices, while his little
figures have a more animated effect, notwithstanding the less
piquant manner in which they are painted. Their outlines are
scarcely perceptible, and yet they are seen walking, jostling,
and pressing against each other, whereas those of Fortuny,
precisely through the more subtile and microscopic method in
which they have been executed, often seem as though they
were benumbed in movement. Certain market scenes, with a
dense crowd of buyers and sellers, are peculiarly spirited, rapid
sketches, with a gleaming charm of colour.
Zamacois, Casanova^ and Raimundo de Madrazo^ Fortuny's
brother-in-law, show no less virtuosity of the pallet Sea-pieces
and little landscapes alternate with scenes from Spanish popular
life, where they revel, like Fortuny, in a scintillating motleyness
of colour. Later, in Paris, Madrazo was likewise much sought
after as a painter of ladies' portraits, as he lavished on his
pictures sometimes a fine haut goUt of fragrant Rococo grace
d la Chaplin, and sometimes devoted himself with taste and
deftness to symphonic tours de force d la Carolus Duran.
Particularly memorable is the portrait of a graceful young girl
in red, exhibited in the Munich Exhibition of 1883. She is
seated upon a sofa of crimson silk, and her feet rest upon
a dark red carpet. And equally memorable was a pierrette
in the Paris World Exhibition of 1889, whose costume ran
through the whole gamut from white to rose-colour. Her skirt
was of a darker, her bodice of a brighter red, and a light
rose-coloured stocking peeped from beneath a grey silk petti-
coat; over her shoulders lay a white swansdown cape, and
white gloves and white silk shoes with rose-coloured bows
completed her toilette. His greatest picture represented "The
End of a Mask Ball." Before the Paris Opera cabs are waiting
with coachmen sleeping or smoking, whilst a troop of pierrots
and Pierrettes, harlequins, Japanese girls, Rococo gentlemen, and
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iHanfstdngl htlio,
Bknuurk y Gil : *' A Vision in the Colosseum."
Turkish women are streaming out, sparkling with the most
glittering colours in the grey winter morning, into which the
gas of the lamps casts a paling yellow light.
Even those who made their chief success as historical
painters became new beings when they came forward with such
piquant " little paintings." Francisco Domingo in Valencia is
the Spanish Meissonier, who has painted little horsemen before
an inn, mercenary soldiers, newspaper-readers, and philosophers
of the time of Louis XV., with all the daintiness in colour
associated with the French patriarch — although a huge canvas,
"The Last Day of Sagunt," has the reputation of being his
chief performance. In the year in which he exhibited his
** Vision in the Colosseum," Benliure y Gil had success with two
little pictures stippled in varied colours, the " Month of Mary "
and the "Distribution of Prizes in Valencia," in which children,
smartened and dressed in white frocks, are moving in the
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Casado: "The Bells of Huesca."
ante-chambers of a church, which are festally adorned. Casado^
painter of the sanguinary tragedy of Huesca, showed himself an
admirable little master full of elegance and grace in " The
Bull-fighter's Reward," a small eighteenth-century picture. The
master of the great hospital picture, Jimenez^ took the world by
surprise at the very same time by a "Capuchin Friar's Sermon
before the Cathedral of Seville," which flashed with colour.
Emilio Sola y Frances, whose historical masterpiece was the
" Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1493," delights elsewhere
in spring. Southern gardens with luxuriant vegetation, and
delicate Rococo ladies, holding up their skirts filled with blooming
roses, or bending to the grass to pick field-flowers. Antonio
Fabris was led to the East by the influence of Regnault, and
excited attention by his aquarelles and studies in pen and ink, in
which he represented Oriental and Roman street figures with
astonishing adroitness. But the ne plus ultra is attained by the
bold and winning art of Pradilla^ which is like a thing shot out of
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SPAIN 89
a pistol. He is the greatest product of contemporary Spain,
a man of ingenious and improvizing talent, moving with ease
in the most varied fields. In the bold and spirited decorations
with which he embellished Spanish palaces, he sported with
nymphs and Loves and floating genii d la Tiepolo. All the
grace of the Rococo period is cast over his works in the Palais
Murga in Madrid. The figures join each other with ease —
cbquettish nymphs swaying upon boughs, and audacious ** Putti "
tumbling over backwards in quaint games. Nowhere is there
academic sobriety, and everywhere life, pictorial inspiration, the
intoxicating joyousness of a fancy creating without effort and
revelling in the festal delight of the senses. In the accom-
panying wall-pictures he revived the age of the troubadours,
of languishing love-song and knightly romance free from the
burden of thought, in tenderly graceful and fluent figures. And
this same painter, who filled these huge spaces of wall, lightly
dallying with subjects from the world of fable, seems another
man when he grasps fragments from the life of our own age in
pithy inspirations sure in achievement. His historical pictures
are works which compel respect ; but those paintings of the
most diminutive scale, where he represented scenes from the
Roman carnival and the life in Spanish camps, the shore of
the sea and the joy of a popular merry-making, with countless
figures of the most intense vividness, carried out with an un-
rivalled execution of detail which is yet free from anything
laboured, and full of splendour and glowing colour, these indeed
are performances of painting beside which as a musical counter-
part at best Paganini's variations on the G string are com-
parable— sleights of art of which only Pradilla is capable in
these days, and such as only Fortuny painted thirty years ago.
In this marvellous acrobat of the pallet the strength of the
Romance genius is embodied. He not only prescribes subject,
technique, and colour for the Spaniards of the present, but
he is also the spiritual ancestor to whom modern Italian
painting may be traced.
VOL. m.
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Fortunes influence on the Italians, especially on the school of Naples, —
Domenico Morelli and his followers: F, P. Michetti, Edoardo
Dalbono^ Alceste Camfriani, Giacomo di ChiricOy Rubens Santoro,
Edoardo Toffano. — Prominence of the costume-picture, — Venice :
Favrettoy Lonza, — Florence: Andreotti, Conti, Gelli, Vinea, — The
peculiar position of Segantini, — OtheT^wise anecdotic painting still
preponderates.— Chiericit Rotta^ Vannuttelli, Monteverde, Tito, —
Reasons why the further development of modern art was generally
completed not so much on Latin as on Germanic soil,
THE sun of Italy has not grown paler ; the Gulf of Baiae
shines with its old brightness ; the mighty oaks of Lerici
still grow luxuriantly ; the marvels of Michael Angelo and Titian
still hang in the galleries ; and it is only the painting of Italy
that has nothing any longer of that lofty majesty in the shadow
of which the world lay in the sixteenth century : it has become
petty, worldly, and frivolous. This reflection runs through most
discussions on modern Italian pictures as a burden of complaint,
whereas it would be more just to make it a matter of praise
for the moderns that they should differ from the old masters.
To compare living Italy with the past, to hold up for ever the
great geniuses of old time as figures of warning before the
painters of the present, were to condemn the latter to a stationary
condition, to the activity of mere copyists. It is a sign of power
and self- consciousness that, instead of copying their great
masters, they have founded a new and original school by their
own efforts— that, even in this country, where the artist is
oppressed by the wealth of old masterpieces, painting has
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ITALY 91
created for itself a style of its own. Italy is no longer eccle-
siastical, no longer papal, but has become a modem and
mundane country, a new nation. This is reflected in Italian
pictures. They are vivid and joyous like the Italian people.
And to have won this freedom is the merit of the living genera-
tion. Even at the World Exhibition of 1855 Edmond About
called Italy "the grave of painting" in his Voyage a travers
r Exposition des Beaux-Arts, He mentions a few Piedmontesc
professors, but about Florence, Naples, and Rome he found
nothing to say. "And Venice?" he queries at the end. "Venice
is situated in Austria." The Great Exhibition of 1862 in England
was productive of no more favourable criticism, for W. Burger's
account is as little consolatory as About *s. '* Renowned Italy
and proud Spain," writes Burger, "have no longer any painters
who can rival those of other schools. There is nothing to be
said about the rooms where the Italians, Spanish, and Swiss
are exhibited." It was only at the World Exhibition of 1867,
after the young kingdom had been founded, that tendencies
towards a certain elevation were displayed, and now Italy has
a throng of vigorous painters. In Angelo de Gubernati's lexicon
of artists there are over two thousand names, some of which
are favourably known in other countries also. Italia fard da sc
has likewise become a saying in art.
Whether it be from direct influence or similarity of origin,
Fortuny has found his ablest successors amongst the Neapolitan
artists. As early as the seventeenth century the school of
painting there was very different from those in the rest of Italy ;
the Greek blood of the population and the wild, romantic
scenery of the Abruzzi gave it a peculiar stamp. Southern brio,
the joy of life, colour, and warmth, in contrast with the noble
Roman ideal of form, were the qualities of Salvator Rosa, Luca
Giordano, and Ribera, bold and fiery spirits. And a breath of
such power seems to live in their descendants still. Even now-
Neapolitan painting sings, dances, and laughs in a bacchanal of
colour, pleasure, delight in life, and glowing sunshine.
A wild and restless spirit, Domenico Morelli, whose biograph>'
is like a chapter from Rinaldo Rinaldini, is the head of this
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MODERN PAINTING
KuHst fur All*.]
MoRELLi: "The Temptation of St. Anthony."
Neapolitan school. He was born on August 4th, 1826, and in
his youth he is said to have been, first a pupil in a seminary of
priests, then an apprentice with a mechanician, and for some
time even facchino. He never saw such a thing as an academy.
Indeed it was a Bohemian life that he led, taking his meals on
bread and cheese, wandering for weeks together with Byron's
poems in his pocket upon the seashore between Posilippo and
Baiae. In 1848 he fought against King Ferdinand, and was left
severely wounded on the battle-field. After these episodes of
youth he first became a painter, beginning his career in 1855
with the large picture "The Iconoclasts," followed in 1857 by
a "Tasso," and in 1858 by a "Saul and David." Biblical
pictures remained his province even later, and he was the only
artist in Italy who handled these subjects from an entirely
novel point of view, pouring into them a peculiarly exalted and
imaginative spirit A Madonna rocking her sleeping Child,
whilst her song is accompanied by a legion of cherubs playing
upon instruments, "The Reviling of Christ," "The Ascension/'
"The Descent from the Cross," "Christ walking on the Sea,"
"The Raising of the Daughter of Jairus," "The Expulsion of
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93
the Money-Changers from
the Temple," "The Marys
at the Grave," " Salve
Regina," and " Mary
Magdalen meeting Christ
Risen from the Grave,"
are the principal stages of
his great Christian epic,
and in their imaginative
naturalism a new revo-
lutionary language finds
utterance through all these
pictures. There is in them
at times something of the
mystical quietude of the
East, and at times some-
thing of the passionate
breath of Eugene Dela-
croix. In these pictures
he revealed himself as a
true child of the land of
the sun, a lover of paint-
ing which scintillates and
flickers. As yet hard, pon-
derous, dark, and plastic
in " The Iconoclasts," he
was a worshipper of light
and resplendent in colour
in the "Mary Magdalen."
"The Temptation of St. Anthony" probably marks the summit
of his creative power in the matter of colour. Morelli has con-
ceived the whole temptation as an hallucination. The saint
squats upon the ground, claws with his fingers, and closes his
eyes to protect himself from the thoughts, full of craving sen-
suality, which are flaming in him. Yet they throng ever more
thickly, take shape ever more distinctly, are transformed into
red-haired women who detach themselves from corners upon all
Kunsifiir AiU.}
MicHETTi: "The Corpus Domini Procession
AT Chieti."
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94 MODERN PAINTING
iUan/stangl helio,
MicHETTX : " Going to Church."
sides. They rise from beneath the matting, wind nearer from
the depth of the cavern, even the breeze caressing the fevered
brow of the tormented man changes into the head of a kissing
girl. Only Naples could produce an artist at once so bizarre,
so many-sided and incoherent, so opulent and strange. Younger
men of talent trooped around him. A fiery spirit, haughty and
independent, he became the teacher of all the younger genera-
tion. He led them to behold the sun and the sea, to marvel
at nature in her radiant brightness. Through him the joy in
light and colour came into Neapolitan painting, that rejoicing
in colour which touches such laughing concords in the works of
his pupil Pao/o Michetti,
A man of bold and magnificent talent, the genuine product
of the wild Abruzzi, Michetti was the son of a day-labourer,
like Morelli. However, a man of position became the protector
of the boy, who was early left an orphan. But neither at the
Academy at Naples, nor in Paris and London, did this continue
long. As early as 1876 he was back in Naples, and settled
amid the Abruzzi, close to the Adriatic, in Francavilla a Mare,
near Ostona, a little nest passed just before the traveller goes
on board the Oriental steamer in Brindisi. Here he lives out
of touch with old pictures, in the thick of the vigorous life of
the Italian people. In 1877 he painted the work which laid
the foundation of his celebrity, " The Corpus Domini Procession
at Chieti," a picture which rose like a firework in its boisterous,
rejoicing, and glaring motleyness of colour. The procession is
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ITALY 95
seen just coming out of church : men, women, naked children,
monks, priests, a canopy, choristers with censers, old men and
youths, people who kneel and people who laugh, the mist of
incense, the beams of the sun, flowers scattered on the ground,
a band of musicians, and a church facade with rich and many-
coloured ornaments. There is the play of variously hued silk,
and colours sparkle in all the tints of the prism. Everything
laughs, the faces and the costumes, the flowers and the sun-
beams. Following upon this came a picture which he called
"Spring and the Loves." It represented a desolate promontory
in the blue sea, and upon it a troop of Cupids, playing round
a blooming hedge of hawthorn, are scuffling, buffeting each
other, and leaping more riotously than the Neapolitan street-
boys. Some were arrayed like little Japanese, some like Grecian
terra-cotta figures, whilst a marble bridge in the neighbourhood
was shining in indigo blue. The whole picture gleamed with
red, blue, green, and yellow patches of colour : a serpentine dance
painted twelve years before the appearance of Loie Fuller. Then
he painted the sea again. It is noon, and the sultry heat broods
over the azure tide. Naked fishermen are standing in it, and
on the shore gaily dressed women are searching for muscles ;
whilst in the background vessels, with the sun playing on their
sails, are mirrored brightly in the water. Or the moon is rising
and casts greenish reflections upon the body of Christ, which
shines like phosphorus as it is being taken from the cross : or
there is a flowery landscape upon a summer evening ; birds are
making their nest for the night, and little angels are kissing
each other and laughing. In all these pictures Michetti showed
himself an improviser of astonishing dexterity, solving every
difficulty as though it were child's play, and shedding a brilliant
colour over everything — a man to whom " painting " was as
much a matter of course as orthography is to ourselves. Even
the Paris World Exhibition of 1878 made him celebrated as an
artist, and from that time his name was to the Italian ear a
symbol for something new, unexpected, wild, and extravagant
The word "Michetti" means splendid materials,' dazzling flesh-
tones, conflicting hues set with intention beside each other, the
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96 MODERN PAINTING
luxuriant bodies of women basking in heat and sun, fantastic
landscapes created in the mad brain of the artist, strange and
curious frames, and village idylls in the glowing blaze of the
sun. There are no lifeless spots in his works; every whim of
his takes shape, as if by sorcery, in splendid figures.
Another pupil of Morelli, Edoardo Dalbono^ completed his
duty to history by a scene of horror a la Laurens, "The
Excommunication of King Manfred," and then became the
painter of the Bay of Naples. "The Isle of Sirens*' was the
first production of his able, appetizing, and nervously vibrating
brush. There is a steep cliff dropping sheer into the blue sea.
Two antique craft are drawing near, the crews taking no heed
of the reefs and sandbanks. With phantom-like gesture the
naked women stretch out their arms beckoning, embodiments
as they are of the deadly beautiful and voluptuously cruel
ocean. By degrees the sea betrayed to him all its secrets — its
strangest combinations of colour and atmospheric effects, its
transparency, and its eternally shifting phases of ebb and flow.
He has painted the Bay of Naples under bright, hot noon and
the gloom of night, in the purple light of the sinking sun, and
in the strange and many-coloured mood of twilight. At one
moment it shines and plays variegated and joyous in blue,
grass-green, and violet tones ; at another it seems to glitter
with millions of phosphorescent sparks : and the rosy clouds of
the sky are glassed in it, and the lights of the hou.ses irregularly
dotted over abrupt mountain-chains, or the dark-red glow of
lava luridly shining from Vesuvius. Now and then he painted
scenes from Neapolitan street-life — old, weather-beaten seamen,
young sailors with features as sharply cut as if cast in bronze,
beautiful, fiery, brown women, shooting the hot Southern flame
from their eyes, houses painted white or orange-yellow, in
the windows of which the sun is glittering. The "Voto alia
Madonna der Carmine" was the most comprehensive of these
Southern pictures. Everything shines in joyous blue, yellowish-
green, and red colours. Warmth, life, light, brilliancy, and
laughter are the elements on which his art is based.
Alceste Campriani, Giacamo di Chirico^ Rubens SantorOy Federigo
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ITALY 97
Cortese^ Francesco Nettiy Edoardo
Toffano^ Giuseppe de NigriSy have,
all of them, this kaleidoscopic
sparkle, this method of painting
which gives pictures the appear-
ance of being mosaics of precious
stones. As in the days of the
Renaissance, the Church is usually
the scene of action, though not
any longer as the house of God,
but as the background of a
coloured throng. As a rule these
pictures contain a crowd of cano-
pies, priests and choristers, and Giacomo FAVRErto.
country-folk, bowing or kneeling
when the host is carried by, or weddings, horse-races, and country
festivals ; and everything is vivid and joyous in colour, saturated
with the glowing sun of Naples. Alceste Campriani's chief work
was entitled "The Return from Montevergine." Carriages and
open rack-waggons are dashing along, the horses snorting and
the drivers smacking their whips, while the peasants, who have
had their fill of sweet wine, are shouting and singing, and the
orange-sellers in the street are crying their goods at a cheap price.
A coquettish, glancing light plays over the gay costumes, and
the white dust sparkles like fluid silver, as it rises beneath the
hoofs of the horses wildly plunging forward. The leading work
of Giacomo di Chirico, who became mad in 1883, was "A
Wedding in the Basilicata." It represents a motley crowd. The
entire village has set out to see the ceremony. The wedding-
guests are descending the church steps to the square, which is
decked out with coloured carpets and strewn with flowers.
Triumphal arches have been built, and the pictures of the
Madonna are hung with garlands. Meanwhile the sindaco
gives his arm to the bride, beneath whose gay costume a charm-
ingly graceful little foot is peeping out. Then the bridegroom
follows with the sindaco's wife. With curiosity all the village
girls are looking on, and the musicians are playing. Winter has
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MODERN PAINTING
Favretto: "On the Piazzetta."
IHan/itaHgi hclw.
covered the square with a white cloak of snow ; yet the
sunbeams sport over it, making it shine vividly with a thousand
reflections.
Of course the derivation of all these pictures is easily recog-
nizable. Almost all the Neapolitan painters studied at Fortuny's
in the seventies in Rome, and when they came home again they
perceived that the life of the people offered themes which had a
coquettish fitness in Fortuny's scale of tones. From the variously
coloured magnificence of old churches, the red robes of eccle-
siastics, the gaudy splendour of the country-people's clothes, and
the gay glory of rags amongst the Neapolitan children, they
composed a modern Rococo, rejoicing in colour, whilst the
Spaniard had fled to the past to attain his gleaming eflfects.
A great number of the Italians do the same even now. In
numerous costume-pictures from the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, flashing with silk and velvet, the Southerner's bright
pleasure in colour still loves to celebrate its orgies. Gay trains
rustle, rosy Loves laugh down from the walls, Venetian chandeliers
shed their radiance ; no other epoch in history enables the painter
with so much ease to produce juicily blooming, full-toned chords
of colour. With his shining glow of hue, the appetizing and
spirited Favretto (who, like Fortuny, entered the world of art as
a victor, and, like him again, was snatched from it! when barely
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Favretto: *' Susanna and the Elders."
iHanfstdMgi helio^
thirty-seven, after a brief and brilliant career) stands at the head
of this group. The child of poor parents, indeed the son of a
joiner, he was born in Venice in 1849, and, like the Spaniard,
passed a youth which was full of privations. But all the cares
of existence, even the loss of an eye, did not hinder him from
seeing objects under a laughing brightness of colour. Through
his studies and the bent of his fancy he had come to be no less at
home in the Venice of the eighteenth century than in that of his
own time. This Venice of Francesco Guardi, this city of en-
chantment surrounded with the gleam of olden splendour, the
scene of rich and brilliantly coloured banquets and a graceful
and modish society, rose once more under Favretto*s hands in
fabulous beauty. What brio of technique, what harmony of
colours, were to be found in the picture " Un Incontro," the
charming scene upon the Rialto Bridge, with the bowing cavalier
and the lady coquettishly making her acknowledgments ! This
was the first picture which gave him a name in the world. What
fanfares of colour were in the two next pictures, " Banco Lotto "
and " Erbajuolo Veneziano " ! At the exhibition in Turin in
1883 he was represented by "The Bath" and "Susanna and
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MODERN PAINTING
mcnt of the Piazzetta at the hour of the promenade, from the Doge's
palace to the h'brary, and from the Square of St Mark to the
pillar of the lions and Theodore, to and fro in surging life. Men
put up their glasses and chivalrously greeted the queens of
beauty. The enchanting magic building of Sansovino, the loggetta
with their bright marble pillars, bronze statues of blackish grey,
and magnificent lattice doors, formed the background of the
standing and sauntering groups, whose variegated costumes
united with the tones of marble and bronze to make a most
beautiful assemblage of colours. Favretto had a manner of his
own, and, although a member of the school of Fortuny, he was
stronger and healthier than the latter. He drew like a genuine
painter, without having too much of the Fortuny fireworks. His
soft, rich painting was that of a colourist of distinction, always
tasteful, exquisite in tone, and light and appetizing in technique.
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ITALY
lOI
Munich Phoiographic Union.]
CoNTi: "The Lutk-Player.'*
By the other
Italian cos-
tume - painters
the scale run
through by
Fortuny was
not enriched
by new notea
Most of their
pictures are
nugatory, co-
quettishly
sportive toys,
masterly in
technique no
doubt, but so empty of substance that they vanish from memory
like novels read upon a railway journey. Many have no greater
import than dresses, cloaks, and hats worn by ladies during
a few weeks of the season. Sometimes their significance is not
even so great, since there are modistes and dressmakers who
have more skill in making ruches and giving the right nuance
to colours. Some small part of Favretto's refined taste seems
to have been communicated to the Venetian Antonio Lonza^ who
delights in mingling the gleaming splendour of Oriental carpets,
fans, and screens amid the motley, picturesque costumes of the
Rococo period — Japanese who perform as jugglers and knife-
throwers in quaint Rococo gardens before the old Venetian
nobility. But the centre of this costume-painting is Florence,
and the great mart for it the Societh artistica^ where there are
yearly exhibitions.
Francesco Vinea, Tito Conti, Federigo Andreotti, and Edoardo
Gelli are in Italy the special manufacturers who have devoted
themselves, with the assistance of Meissonier, G6r6me, and For-
tuny, to scenes from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
to plumed hats, Wallenstein boots, and horsemen's capes, to
Renaissance lords and laughing Renaissance ladies, and they
have thereby won great recognition in Germany. Pretty, Ian-
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MODERN PAINTING
guishing women in richly
coloured costumes, tippling
soldiers and gallant cava-
liers, laughing peasant
women and trim serving-
girls drawing wine in the
cellar-vaults and setting
it before a trooper, who
in gratitude affectionately
puts his arm round their
waist, beautiful and still
more languishing noble
ladies, who laugh with a
parrot or a dog instead of
the trooper in apartments
richly furnished with Gobe-
lins— such for the most
part are the subjects
treated by Francesco Vinea
with great virtuosity bor-
dering on the routine of a typewriter. His technique is neither
refined nor fascinating ; the colours are so crude that they
affect the eye as a false note the ear. But the mechanical
power of his painting is great. He has much ability, far more
indeed than Sichel, and possesses the secret of painting, in an
astonishing manner, the famous lace kerchiefs wound round the
heads of his fair ones. Andreotti and Tito Conti work in the
same fashion, except that the ballad-singers and rustic idylls
of Andreotti are the smoother and more mawkish, whereas the
pictures of Conti make a somewhat more refined and artistic
effect. His colour is superior and more transparent, and his
tapestry backgrounds are warmer.
And, so far as one can judge from their pictures, life runs
as merrily for the Italians of the present as it did for those
Rococo cavaliers. Hanging here and there beside the serious
art of other nations, these little picture-people enjoy their care-
less tinsel pomp ; art is a gay thing for them, as gay as a
Tito: "The Slipper-Seller.'
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103
Brothers sc.
Segantini : " The Punishment of Luxury."
Sunday afterncK>n with a procession and fireworks, walks and
sips of sherbet, to an Italian woman. By the side of the blue-
plush and red-velvet costume-picture comic £'enre still holds its
sway : barbaric in colour and with materials which are merrier
than is appropriate in tasteful pictures, Gcetano Chierici repre-
sents children, both good and naughty, making their appearance
upon a tiny theatre. Antonio Rotta renders comic episodes from
the life of Venetian cobblers and the menders of nets. Scipione
Vannuttellt paints young girls in white dresses arrayed as nuns
or being confirmed in church. Francesco Monteverde rejoices in
comical intermezzi in the style of Griitzner— for instance, an
ecclesiastical gentleman observing, to his horror, that his pretty
young servant-girl is being kissed by a smart lad in the yard. This
is more or less his style of subject Ettore Tito paints the pretty
Venetian laundresses whom Passini, Cecil van Haanen, Charles
Ulrich, Eugene Blaas, and others introduced into art. Some also
struck deeper notes. Luigi Nono, in Venice, painted his beautiful
picture " Refugium Peccatorum ; " Ferragutti, the Milanese, his
** Workers in the Turnip Field," a vivid study of sunlight of serious
veracity ; and more recently Giovanni Segantini has come forward
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I04 MODERN FAINTING
with some very uncommon pieces, in which he demonstrated that
it is possible for a man to be an Italian and yet a serious artist
Segantini's biography is like a novel. Born the child of poor
parents, in Arco, in 1858, he was left, after the death of his
parents, to the care of a relative in Milan, with whom he passed
a most unhappy time. He then wanted to make his fortune in
France, and set out upon foot ; but he did not get very far, and,
indeed, took a situation as a swine-herd beneath a land-steward.
After this he lived for a whole year alone in the wild mountains,
worked in the field, the stable, the barn. Then came the well-
known discovery, which one could not believe were it not to be
read in Gubernati. One day he drew the finest of his pigs with
a piece of charcoal upon a mass of rock. The peasants ran in a
crowd and took the block of stone, together with the young
Giotto, in triumph to the village. He was given assistance,
visited the School of Art in Milan, and now paints the things
he did in his youth. A thousand metres across the sea, in a
secluded village of the Alps, Val d'Albola in Switzerland, amid
the grand and lofty mountains, he settled down, surrounded
only by the peasants who extort their livelihood from the soil.
Out of touch with the world of artists the whole year round,
observing great nature at every season and every hour of the
day, fresh and straightforward in character, he is one of those
natures of the type of Millet, in whom heart and hand, man
and artist, are one and the same thing. His shepherd and
peasant scenes from the valleys of the high Alps are free from
all flavour of genre. The life of these poor and humble beings
passes without contrasts and passions, being spent altogether
in work, which fills the long course of the day in monotonous
regularity. The sky sparkles with a sharp brilliancy. The
spiky yellow and tender green of the fields forces its way
modestly from the rocky ground. In front is something like
a hedge where a cow is grazing, or there is a shepherdess
giving pasture to her sheep. Something majestic there is in
this cold nature, where the sunshine is so sharp, the air so thin.
And the primitive, it might almost be said antique, execution
of these pictures is in accord with the primitive simplicity of
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ITALY . los
the subjects. In fact Segantini's pictures, with their cold silvery-
colours, and their contours so sharp in outlines, standing out
hard against the rarified air, make an impression like encaustic
paintings in wax, or mosaics. They have nothing alluring or
pleasing, and there is, perhaps, even a touch of mannerism in
this mosaic painting ; but they are nevertheless exceedingly true,
rugged, austere, and yet sunny, and as soon as one has seen
them one begins to admire an artist who pursues untrodden
paths alone. There is something Northern and virginal, some-
thing earnest and grandiose, which stands in strange contrast
with the joyful, conventional smile which is otherwise spread
over the countenance of Italian painting.
With the exception of Segantini, not one of these painters
will own that there are poverty-stricken and miserable people
in his native land. An everlasting blue sky still laughs over
Italy, merely sunshine and the joy of life rule still over
Italian pictures. There is no work in sunny Italy, and in spite
of that there is no hunger. Even where work is being done,
there are assembled only the fairest girls of Lombardy, who
kneel laughing and jesting on the strand, while the wind dallies
with their clothes. They have a special delight for showing
themselves while engaged at their toilette, in a bodice, their little
feet in neat little slippers, their naked arms raised to arrange
their red-gold hair. As a rule, however, they do nothing what-
ever but smile at you with their most seductive smile, which
shows their pearl-white teeth, and ensnares every poor devil
who does not suspect that they have smiled for years in the
same way, and most of all with him who pays highest : '^faime
les kontmes parce que faime les truffesr These pictures are almost
throughout works which are well able to give pleasure to their
possessor, only they seldom suggest discussion on the course
of art. Trop de marchandise is the phrase generally used in
the Paris Salon when the Italians come under consideration.
Few there are amongst them who are real pioneers, spirits
pressing seriously forward and having a quickening influence
for others. The vital questions of the painting of free light.
Impressionism, and Naturalism do not interest them in the
VOL. III. 8
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io6 MODERN PAINTING
least. A naYve, pleasant, lively, and self-complacent technique
is in most cases the solitary charm of their works. One feels
scarcely any inclination to search the catalogue for the painters
name, and whether the beauty — for she is not the first of her
kind — who was called Ninetta last year has now become Lisa.
Most of these modern Italians execute their pictures in the
way in which gold pieces are minted, or in the way in which
plastic works, which run through so many editions, are produced
in Italy. Nowhere are more beautiful laces chiselled, and in
the same manner painters render the shining splendour of satin
and velvet, the glittering brilliancy of ornaments, and the starry
radiance of the beautiful tyt:& of women. Only as soon as one
has once seen them one knows the pictures by heart as one
knows the works in marble, and this is so because the painters
had them by heart first Everywhere there are the evidences
of talent, industry, ability, and spirit, but there is no soul in
the spirit and no life in the colours. So many brilliant tones
stand beside each other, and yet there is neither a refined tone
nor the impression of truth to nature.
In all this art of theirs there is scarcely a question of any
serious landscape. Apart from the works of some of the
younger men — for instance, Belloniy Serra^ Gola^ Filippini^ and
others, who display an intimacy of observation which is worthy
of honour — a really close connection with the efforts m^de
across the Alps is not achieved in these days. As a rule the
landscapes are mere products of handicraft, which are striking
for the moment by their technical routine, but seldom waken
any finer feelings, whether the Milanese paint the dazzling
effects of the Alps, or the Venetians lagunes steeped in light,
with gondolas and gondola-poles glowing in the sunshine, or
the Neapolitans, set glittering upon the canvas their beautiful
bay like a brilliant firework. Most of them continue to pursue
with complete self-satisfaction the flagged gondola of Ziem ; the
conquests of the Fontainebleau painters and of the Impressionists
are unnoticed by them.
And this industrial characteristic of Italian painting is
sufficiently explained by the entire character of the country.
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ITALY 107
The Italian painter is not properly in a position to seek effects
of his own and to make experiments. Hardly anything is
bought for the galleries, and there are few collectors of superior
taste. He labours chiefly for the traveller, and this gives his
performances the stamp of attractive mercantile wares. The
Italian is too much a man of business to undertake great trials
of strength pour le rot de Prusse, He paints no great pictures,
which would be still-born children in his home, nor does he
paint severe studies of plein-air^ preferring a specious, exuberant,
flickering, and glaring revel in colour. In general he produces
nothing which will not easily sell, and has a fine instinct for
the taste of the rich travelling public, who wish to see nothing
which does not excite cheerful and superficial emotions.
But it is possible that this decline of the Latin races is
connected with the nature of modern art itself. Of late the
words "Germanic" and "Latin" have been much abused. It has
been proclaimed that the new art meant the victory of the
German depth of feeling over the Latin sense of form, the
onset of German cordiality against the empty exaggeration in
which the imitation of the Cinquecento resulted. Such assertions
are always hard to maintain, because every century shows similar
reactions of truth to nature against mannerism. Nevertheless is
it true that modern art, with its heartfelt devotion to every-
day life and the mysteries of light, has an essentially Germanic
character, finding its ancestors not in Raphael, Michael Angelo,
and Titian, but in the English of the eighteenth, the Dutch of
the seventeenth, and the Germans of the sixteenth century. The
Italians and Spaniards, whose entire intellectual culture rests upon
a Latin foundation, may therefore find it difficult to follow this
change of taste. They either adhere to the old bombastic and
theatrical painting of history, or they recast the new painting
in an external drawing-room art draped with gaudy , tinsel.
Even in France the rise of the new art meant, as it were, the
virtory of the Prankish element over the Gallic. Millet the
Norman, Courbet the Frank, Bastien-Lepage of Lorraine, drove
back the Latins Ingres and Couture, Cabanel and Bouguereau,
just as in the eighteenth century the Netherlander Watteau
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io8 MODERN FAINTING
broke the yoke of the rigid Latin Classicism. And as in those
days Watteau was followed by Francois Boucher, who was more
touched by the Latin spirit, so in these it must be recognized
that the youngest generation have clothed the spirit of Germanic
efforts in art once more in a Latin formula In external
respects French art is still the most imposing in the world.
What esprit^ what greatness of movement, what sovereign
sureness runs through their works ; and how provincial, how
painfully embarrassed, and how uncertain seem those of other
nations in comparison! The French artist, therefore, moves
upon the floor of exhibitions with the self-possession of a man
of the world, who has grown up in high-bred circles, in whom
all the finesses of social life are part and parcel of his very
being, and who is, therefore, always a model in matters of good
taste. The greater number of French artists are interesting^
exuberant in talent, novel, and piquant. In the improvement
of technique — technique absolute and as a thing in itself— lies
the historical mission of the French. In a certain sense they
are almost all c/tercheurs. They grapple with the problems
of colour, of the reflections of light, of the phases of atmo-
sphere; and in putting out all their strength to master these
most difficult elements of the phenomenal world and to paint
them with the utmost illusion of reality, they have, as a matter
of fact, brought painting — and not merely that of the nineteenth
century — forward by some degrees as regards the observation of
nature. Upon its technical side they have taken up the problem
stated by Millet and Bastien-Lepage : they have established a
kind of general bass of modern painting, and polished and
refined its technical instruments in a manner hardly to be
surpassed.
But where is the spirit of the new art to be found ? As a
spurious historical genre came in the wake of Delacroix, the
initiators Courbet, Manet, and Degas have been multifariously
succeeded by a spurious modern genre. Since Dagnan-Bouveret
an element has once more forced its way into painting which
brings realism and mawkishness into a most unpleasant com-
bination. Even anecdotic painting is emerging again upon all
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ITALY 109
sides. The very being of Naturalism has in many respects
vanished in company with the ruggedness peculiar to it some
years ago, while of all that movement of the past decades, with
its effort after truth, the brightening of the pallet is the only
thing that has been essentially retained. Everywhere one comes
across that fascination for the mind which is always given by a
surprise, something which creates astonishment at the boldness,
be it greater or less, with which difficult tasks connected with
the rendering of nature have been solved in painting. But the
most recent French painting — like the Spanish and Italian —
has few impressions to offer for the inmost spirit
These threads of the Germanic aim in art were drawn out
only by the Germanic nations. Whilst the French are still
formalists as they were in the times of David, the Teutons have
used the better technical equipment of the present day as the
means for expressing the deeper emotions of life. The highest
art is once more identical with simple nature. In one case
there is the form of art bearing the impress of pictorial point
and understanding; in the other it is endowed with substance
and a soul. In one case a striking effect is made by brilliant
technique, mastery of the manual art of painting, and careless
sway over all the enchantments of the craft; in the other one
stands in the presence of an art which is so natural and simple
that one scarcely thinks of the means by which it was called
into being. In one case there is virtuosity, ductility, and grace ;
in the other health, intrinsic feeling, and temperament.
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CHAPTER XXXVII
ENGLAND
General characteristic of English fainting. — The offshoots of Classicism :
Lord Leighton, Val Prinstp, Poynter, Alma Tadema. — Japanese ten-
dencies : Albert Moore. — The animal picture with antique surround-
ings: Briton-Riviire. — The old genre fainting remodelled in a
naturalistic sense by George Mason and Frederick Walker.— George
H, Boughton^ Philip H. Calderon, Marcus Stone, G. D. Leslie, P. G.
Morris, J. R. Reid, Frank Holl.^The ^trait-painters: OulesSr
J. % Shannon, James Sant, Charles TV. Furse, Hubert Herkomer.—
Landscape-painters. — Zigzag development of English landscape-
painting. — The School of Fontainebleau and the French Impres-
sionism rose on the shoulders of Constable and Turner, whereas
England, under the guidance of the Preraphaelites, deviated in the
opposite direction until prompted by France to return to the old path, —
Cecil Lawson, James Clarke Hook, Vicat Cole, Colin Hunter, John
Brett, Inchbold, Leader, Corbett^ Ernest Parton, Mark Fisher, John
White, Alfred East, J. Aumonier.—The sea-painters : Henry Moore ^
W.L. Wyllic—The importance of Venice for English painting: Clara
Montalba, Luke Fildes, W, Logsdail, Henry Woods.— French in-
fluences : Dudley Hardy, Stott of Oldham, Stanhope Forbes.
TO English painting the acquisitions of the French could
now give little that was radically novel, for the epoch-
making labours of the Preraphaelites were already in existence.
Apart from certain cases of direct borrowing, it has either
completely preserved its autonomy, or recast everything assimi-
lated from France in a specifically English fashion. It is in
art indeed as it is with men themselves. The English travel
more than any other people, for travel is a part of their
education. They are to be met in every quarter of the globe,
in Africa, Asia, America, or the European Continent, and they
scarcely need to open their mouths— even from a distance — to
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ENGLAND iii
betray that they are English. In the same way there is no
need of a catalogue at exhibitions to recognize all English
pictures at the first glance. English painting is too English
not to be fond of travel. The painter delights in reconnoitring
all other schools and studying all styles ; he is as much at
home in the past as in the present. But as the English
tourist, let him go to the world's end, retains everywhere his
own customs, taste, and habits, so English painting, even on
its most adventurous journeys, remains unwaveringly true to its
national spirit, and returns from all its wanderings more English
than before ; it adapts what is alien with the same delicious
abnegation of all scruple with which the English tongue brings
foreign words into harmony with its own sense of convenience.
A certain softness of feeling and tenderness of spirit induce the
English even in these days to avoid hard contact with reality.
Their art rejects everything in nature which is harsh, rude^
and brutal ; it is an art which polishes and renders the reality
poetic at the risk of debilitating its power. It considers
matters from the standpoint of what is pretty, touching, or
intelligible, and by no means holds that everything true is
necessarily beautiful. And just as little does the English eye
—so much occupied with detail — see light in its most exquisite
subtilties. Indeed it rather sees the isolated fact than the
total harmony, and is clearer than it is fine.
For this reason pkin-air painting has very few adepts, and
the atmospheric influences which blunt the lines of objects,
efface colours, and bring them nearer to each other, meet with
no consideration. Things are given all the sharpness of their
outlines, and the harmony, which in the French follows
naturally from the observation of light and air saturating form
and colour, is the *more artificially attained by everything
being brought into concord in a bright and delicate tone,
which is almost too fine. The audacities of Impressionism are
excluded, because painting which starts from a masterly seizure
of total effect would seem too sketchy to English taste, which
has been formed by Ruskin. Painting must be highly finished
and highly elaborated ; that is a conditio sine qua non which
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MODERN PAINTING
Lord Leighton, P.R.A.
English taste refuses to re-
nounce in oil-painting as
little as in water-colour, and
in England they are more
narrowly related than else-
where, and have mutually
influenced each other in the
matter of technique. In
fact English water-colours
seek to rival oil-painting
in force and precision, and
have therefore forfeited the
charm of improvization, the
verve of the first jet, and
the freshness and ease which
they should have by their
very character. Through a
curious change of parts oil-
painting has a fancy for
borrowing from water-colours their effects and their processes.
English pictures have no longer anything heavy or oily, but
they likewise .show nothing of the manipulation of the brush,
rather resembling large water-colours, perhaps even pastels or
wax-painting. The colours are chosen with reserve, and every-
thing is subdued and softened like the quiet step of the footman
in the mansion of a nobleman. The special quality in all
English pictures — putting aside a preference for bright yellow
and vivid red in the older period — consists in a bluish or
greenish luminous general tone, to which every English painter
seems to conform as though it were a binding social convention,
and it even recurs in English landscapes. In fact English
painting differs from French as England from France.
France is a great city, and the name of this city is Paris.
Here, and not in the provinces, lives that fashionable, thinking
world which has become the guide of the nation and the
censor of beauty, by the refinement of its taste and its pre-
eminent intelkct. The ideas which fly throughout the land upon
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ENGLAND
"3
Portfofio,'] iFlamtng sc,
Leighton: Sir Richard Burton.
invisible wires are born in
Paris. Painting, likewise,
receives them at first
hand. It stands amid
the seething whirlpool of
the age, the heart's-blood
of the present streams
through all its veins, and
there is nothing human
that is alien to it, neither
the filth nor the splendour
of life, its laughter nor its
misery. All the nerves of
the great city are vibrat-
ing in it Paris has made
her people refined and, at
the same time, insatiate
in enjoyment. Every day
they have need of new impressions and new theories to ward
off tedium. And thus is explained the universally compre-
hensive sphere of subject in French painting, and its feverish
versatility in technique.
But London has, in no sense, the importance for England
which Paris has for France. It is a centre of attraction for
business ; but the more refined classes of society live in the
country. As soon as one is off in the Dover express country-
houses fly past on either side of the train. They are all over
England — upon the shores of the lakes, upon the strand of the
.sea, upon the tops of the hills. And how pleasant they are,
how well appointed, how delightful to look at, with their gabled
roofs and their gleaming brickwork overgrown with ivy ! Around
them stretches a fresh lawn which is rolled every morning, as
soft as velvet. Fat oxen, and sheep as white as if they had
just had a washing, lie upon the grass. Thus all rustic England
is like a great summer resort, where there is heard no sound
of the ringing [and throbbing strokes of life. Nor is painting
allowed to disturb this idyllic harmony. No one wishes that
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"4
MODEMS PAISTISG
LoGHTox: The Acts or Peace.*
iBy p€rmnuum of Om Amkiijpe C4mipmmy, At ammtn of tkt oopyr^kL)
anything should remind him of the prose of life when his work
is done and the town has vanished Schiller's assertion, "Life
is earnest, blithe is art," is here the first law of aesthetics.
English painting is exclusively an art based on luxur>%
optimism, and aristocracy ; in its neatness, cleanliness, and good-
breeding it is exclusively designed to ingratiate itself with
English ideas of comfort. Yet the pictures have to satisfy very
different tastes — ^the taste of a wealthy middle-class which
wishes to have substantial nourishment, and the aesthetic taste
of an ilite class, the readers of George Eliot and Swinburne,
which will only tolerate the quintessence of art, the most subtile
art that can be given. But all these works are not created for
galleries, but for the drawing-room of a private house, and in
subject and treatment they have all to reckon with the ascendant
view that a picture ought in the first place to be an attractive
article of furniture for the sitting-room. The traveller, the lover
of antiquity, is pleased by imitation of the ancient style ; the
sportsman, the lover of country life, has a delight in little rustic
scenes ; and the women are enchanted with feminine types.
And everything must be kept within the bounds of what is
charming, temperate, and prosperous, without in any degree
suggesting the struggle for existence. The pictures have
themselves the grace of that mundane refinement from the midst
of which they are beheld.
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ENGLAND
England is the country
of the sculptures of the
Parthenon, the country
where Bulwer Lytton
wrote his Last Days of
Pompeiiy and where the
most Grecian female
figures in the world may
be seen to move. Thus
painters of antique sub-
jects still play an im-
portant part in the pursuit
of English art — probably
the pursuit of art rather
than its development. For
they have never enriched
the treasury of modern
sentiment Trained, all of
them, in Paris or Belgium,
they are equipped with
finer taste, and have ac-
quired abroad a more solid
ability than James Barry,
Haydon, and Hinton, the
half-barbaric English Clas-
sicists of the beginning
of the century. But at
bottom — like Cabanel and
Bouguereau — they repre-
sent rigid conservatism in
opposition to progress,
and the way in which
they set about the re-
construction of an august
or domestic antiquity is
only distinguished by an
English nuance of race
Leighton : " Psyche's Bath,
{.By permission of tkt Berlin Photographic Company^
thg owners of the copyright.)
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ii8
MODERN PAINTING
from that of Couture and
G^r6me.
Lord Leighton^ the late
highly cultured President
of, the Royal Academy,
was the most dignified
representative of this ten-
dency. He was a Classicist
through and through — in
the balance of composi-
tion, the rhythmical flow
of lines, and the confession
of faith that the highest
aim of art is the repre-
sentation of men and
women of immaculate
build. In the picture-
galleries of Paris, Rome,
Dresden, and Berlin he
received his youthful im-
pressions ; his artistic dis-
cipline he received under
Zanetti in Florence, under
VViertz and Gallait in
Brussels, under Steinle
{By permission of tht Corporation of Manchester^ tht jj^ Frankfort and Undcr
owners of the picture.) *
Ingres and Ary Scheffcr
in Paris. Back in England once more, he translated Couture
into English as Anselm Feuerbach translated him into German
with greater independence. Undoubtedly there has never been
anything upon his canvas which could be supposed ungentle-
manlike. And as a nation is usually apt to prize most the
very thing which has been denied it and for which it has no
talent, Leighton was soon an object of admiration to the
refined world. As early as 1864 he became an associate, and in
November 1879 President of the Royal Academy. For sixteen
years he sat like a Jupiter upon his throne in London. An
Leighton: "The Last Watch of Hero,"
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Broiken photo.}
Poynter: "The Ides of March."
iBy ptrmiaaion of tkg Corporatioh of Mancktster^ the owners of the copyright.)
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121
accomplished man of
the world and a good
speaker, a scholar who
spoke all languages and
had seen all countries,
he possessed every
quality which the pre-
sident of an academy
needs to have ; he had
an exceedingly impos-
ing presence in his red
gown, and did the
honours of his house
with admirable tact.
But one stands be-
fore his works with a
certain feeling of indif-
ference. There are few
artists with so little
temperament as Lord
Leighton, few in the
same degree wanting in
the magic of individu-
ality. The purest academical art, as the phrase is understood
of Ingres, together with academical severity of form, is united
with a softness of feeling recalling Hofmann of Dresden ; and
the result is a placid classicality adapted ad usum Delphini, a
classicality foregoing the applause of artists, but all the more in
accordance with the taste of a refined circle of ladies. His
chief works, " The Star of Bethlehem," " Orpheus and Eurydice,*'
" Jonathan's Token to David," " Electra at the Tomb of
Agamemnon," " The Daphnephoria," " Venus disrobing for the
Bath," and the like, are amongst the most refined although the
most frigid creations of contemporary English art.
Perhaps the " Captive Andromache *' of 1888 is the quintessence
of what he aimed at. The background is the court of an ancient
palace, where female slaves are gathered together fetching water.
VOL. III. 9
Dixon photo. \
Poynter: "Idle Fears."
(By permission of Lord HHiingdon, thg owner of the picture. y
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122
MODERN PAINTING
Poynter: "A Visit to ^Esculapius."
(By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company , the owners of the copyright,"^
\ Ati^errr plmiu i»Ct
In the centre of the stage, as the leading actress, stands
Andromache, who has placed her pitcher on the ground before
her,, and waits with dignity until the slaves have finished their
work. This business of water-drawing has given Leighton an
opportunity for combining an assemblage of beautiful poses. The
widow of Hector expresses a queenly sorrow with decorum,
while the amphora-bearers are standing or walking hither and
thither, in the manner demanded by the pictures upon Grecian
vases, but without that sureness of line which comes of the real
observation of life. In its dignity of style, in the noble com-
position and purity of the lines which circumscribe the forms
with so much distinction and in so impersonal a manner, the
picture is an arid and measured work, cold as marble and smooth
as porcelain. " Hercules wrestling with Death for the Body of
Alcestis" might be a Grecian relief upon a sarcophagus, so
carefully balanced are the masses and the lines. The pose of
Alcestis is that of the nymphs of the Parthenon ; only it would
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ENGLAND
123
VArt'\
Alma Tadema: ** Sappho.'*
{JBy p€rmisiion of the Berlin Photographic Company ^ the owners of the copyright.)
not have been so fine were these not in existence. His " Music
Lesson *' of 1877 is charming, and his "Elijah in the Wilderness"
is a work of style. And in his frescoes in the South Kensington
Museum there is a perfect compendium of beautiful motives of
gesture. The eye delights to linger over these feminine forms,
half nude, half enveloped with drapery, yet it notes, too, that
these creations are composed out of the painter's knowledge and
artistic reminiscences ; there is a want of life in them, because
the master has surrendered himself to feeling with the organs of
a dead Greek. Leighton's colour is always carefully considered,
scrupulously polished, and endowed with the utmost finish, but it
never has the magical charm by which one recognizes the work
of a true colourist. It is rather the result of painstaking study
and cultivated taste than of personal feeling. The grace of form
is always carefully prepared — a thing which has the consciousness
of its own existence. Beautiful and spontaneous as the move-
ments undoubtedly are, one has always a sense that the artist
is present, anxiously watching lest any of his actors offend against
a law of art
Lord Leighton's pupils, Poynter and Prinsep, followed him
with a good deal of determination. Val Prinsep shares with
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124
MODERN PAINTING
\,LAiwftn^tain sc.
Alma Tadema: "The Apodvterium."
iBy permission of Mr. T. McLtan^ the owner of the copyright.)
Leighton the smooth forms of a polished painting, whereas
Edward Poynter by his more earnest severity and metallic
precision verges more on that union of aridness and style charac-
teristic of Ingres. His masterpiece, " A Visit to ^sculapius," is
in point of technique one of the best products of English
Classicism. To the left ^Esculapius is sitting beneath a pillared
porch overgrown with foliage, while, like Raphael's Jupiter in the
Farnesina, he supports his bearded chin thoughtfully with his left
hand. A nymph who has hurt her foot appears, accompanied
by three companions, before the throne of the god, begging him
for a remedy. To say nothing of many other nude or nobly
draped female figures, numerous decorative paintings in the
Houses of Parliament, St. Paul's, and St. Stephen's Church in
Dulwich owe their existence to this most industrious artist.
Alma Tadema, the famous Dutchman who has called to life
amid the London fog the sacrifices of Pompeii and Herculaneum,
stands to this grave academical group as G^rdme to Couture.
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ENGLAND
"5
Alma Tadema: "Pleading."
(By permisaion oj Mr, £. H. Lt/hnrt, thg owntr of th* copyright.)
[Lou>tttsiam stv
As Bulwer Lytton, in the field of literature, created a picture of
ancient civilization so successful that it has not been surpassed
by his followers, Alma Tadema has solved the problem of the
picture of antique manners in the most authentic fashion in
the province of painting. He has peopled the past, rebuilt its
towns and refurnished its houses, rekindled the flame upon the
sacrificial altars and awakened the echo of the dithyrambs to
new life. Poynter tells old fables, while Alma Tadema takes
us in his company, and, like the best-informed cicerone, leads us
through the streets of old Athens, reconstmcting the temples,
altars, and dwellings, the shops of the butchers, bakers, and fish-
mongers, just as they once were.
This power of making himself believed Alma Tadema owes in
the first place to his great archaeological learning. By Leys in
Brussels this side of his talent was first awakened, and in 1863,
when he went to Italy for the first time, he discovered his
archaeological mission. How the old Romans dressed, how their
army was equipped and attired, became as well known to him
as the appearance of the citizens' houses, the artisans* workshops.
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126 MODERN PAINTING
the market and the bath. He explored the ruins of temples, and
he grew familiar with the privileges of the priests, the method of
worship, of the sacrifices, and of the festal processions. There was
no monument of br^ss or marble, no wall-painting, no pictured
vase nor mosaic, no sample of ancient arts, of pottery, stone-
cutting, or work in gold, that he did not study. His brain soon
became a complete encyclopaedia of antiquity. He knew the
forms of architecture as well as he knew the old myths, and all
the domestic appointments and robes as exactly as the usages
of ritual. In Brussels, as early as the sixties, this complete
power of living in the period he chose to represent gave Alma
Tadema's pictures from antiquity their remarkable cachet of
striking truthfulness to life. And London, whither he migrated
in 1870, offered even a more favourable soil for his art. Whereas
the French painters of the antique picture of manners often fell
into a diluted idealism and a lifeless traffic with old curiosities,,
with Alma Tadema one stands in the presence of a veritable
fragment of life ; he simply paints the people amongst whom he
lives and their world. The Pompeian house which he has built
in London, with its dreamy vividarium, its great golden hall, its
Egyptian decorations, its Ionic pillars, its mosaic floor, and its
Oriental carpets, contains everything one needs to conjure up
the times of Nero and the Byzantine emperors. It is surrounded
by a garden in the old Roman style, and a large conservatory
adjoining is planted with plane-trees and cypresses. All the
celebrated marble benches and basins, the figures of stone and
bronze, the tiger-skins and antique vessels and garments of his
pictures, may be found in this notable house in the midst of
London. Whether he paints the baths, the amphitheatre, or the
atrium, the scenes of his pictures are no other than parts of his
own house which he has faithfully painted.
And the figures moving in them are Englishwomen. Among
all the beautiful things in the world there are few so beautiful
as English girls. Those tall, slender, vigorous figures that one
sees upon the beach at Brighton are really like Greek women,
and even the garb which they wear in playing tennis is a^ free
and graceful as that of the Grecian people. Alma Tadema was
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ENGLAND
127
Albert Moore.
able to introduce into his works
these women of lofty and noble
figure with golden hair, these
forms made for sculpture — to
use the phrase of Winckelmann
— without any kind of beautify-
ing idealism. In their still-life
his pictures are the fruit of
enormous archaeological learning
which has become intuitive vision,
but his figures are the result of
a healthy rendering of life. In
this way the unrivalled classical
local colour of his interiors is to
be explained, as well as the
lifelike character of his figures.
By his works a remarkable problem is solved : an intense feeling
for modern reality has called the ancient world into being in
a credible fashion, whilst it has remained barricaded against all
others who have approached it by the road of idealism.
It is only in his method of execution that he still stands
upon the same ground as Gerdme, with whom he shares a taste
for anecdote, and a pedantic, neat, and correct style of painting.
His ancient comedies played by English actors are an excellent
archaeological lecture; they rise above the older picture of
antique manners by a more striking fidelity to nature, very
different from the generalization of the Classicists' ideal ; yet as
a painter he is wanting in every quality. His marble shines,
his bronze gleams, and everything is harmonized with the green
of the cypresses and delicate rose-colour of the oleander blossoms
in a cool marble tone; but there is also something marble in
the figures themselves. He draws and stipples, .works like a
copper engraver, and goes over his work again and again with
a fine and feeble brush. His pictures have the effect of
porcelain, his colours are hard and lifeless. One remembers the
anecdotes, but one cannot speak of any idea of colour.
Albert Moore is to be noted as the solitary "painter" of the
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128
MODERN PAINTING
group : a very delicate
artist, with a style peculiar
to himself; one who is not
so well known upon the
Continent as he deserves
to be. His province, also,
is ancient Greece, yet he
never attempted to recon-
struct classical antiquity
as a learned archaeologist.
Merely as a painter did
he love to dream amid
the imperishable world of
beauty known to ancient
times. His figures are
ethereal visions, and move
in dreamland. He was
influenced, indeed, by the
sculptures of the Parthe-
non, but the Japanese
have also penetrated his
spirit From the Greeks he learnt the combination of noble
lines, the charm of dignity and quietude, while the Japanese
gave him the feeling for harmonies of colour, for soft, delicate,
blended tones. By a capricious union of both these elements
he formed his refined and exquisite style. The world which
he has called into being is made up of white marble pillars ; in
its gardens are cool fountains and marble pavements ; but it is
also full of white birds, soft colours, and rosy blossoms from
Kioto. And it is peopled with graceful and mysterious maidens,
clothed in ideal draperies, who love rest, enjoy an eternal youth,
and are altogether contented with themselves and with one
another. It might be said that the old figures of Tanagra had
received new life, were it not felt, at the same time, that these
beings must have drunk a good deal of tea. Not that they are
entirely modern, for their figures are more plastic and sym-
metrical than those of the actual daughters of Albion ; but in
SaribiurB MagOMint.]
Albert Moore: "Yellow Daffodils.**
(By ptrmissum of IV. Connal^ Esq., the onnur of tht
piciutm*)
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C. Henischgl rtpr.^ [ tioussod- Valadon sc.
Albert Moore: ''Companions."
(By ptrmission o/Missra. DowdeswtU 6* DowtUsweilSf tht own4ra of tht copyright,)
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ENGLAND
131
Albert Moore: "Midsummer."
(By permission 0/ Messrs. Cadbury, Jones ^ Co.^
the owners of the copyright.)
all their movements they
have a certain chicy and in
all their shades of expres-
sion a weary modernity,
through which they deviate
from the conventional
woman of Classicism.
Otherwise the pictures of
Albert Moore are inde-
scribable. Frail, ethereal
beings, blond as corn,
lounge in aesthetically
graduated grey and blue,
salmon - coloured, or pale
purple draperies upon
bright - hued couches de-
corated by Japanese artists
with most aesthetic materials ; or they stand in a violet robe
with a white mantle embroidered with gold by a grey-blue sea,
which has a play of greenish tones at the spot where it breaks
upon the shore. They stand out with their rosy garments
from the light grey background and the delicate arabesques of
a gleaming silvery gobelin, or in a graceful pose occupy
themselves with their rich draperies. They do as little as
they possibly can, but they are living and seductive, and the
stuffs which they wear and have around them are delicately
and charmingly painted. It is harmonies of tone and colour
that exclusively form the subject of every work. The figures,
accessories, and detail first take shape when the scale of colour
has been found ; and then Albert Moore takes a delight in
naming his pictures " Apricots," " Oranges," " Shells," etc., accord-
ing as the robes arc apricot or orange colour or adorned with
light ornaments of shell. Everything which comes from his
hands is delightful in the charm of delicate simplicity, and for
any one who loves painting as painting it has something soothing
in the midst of the surrounding art, which still confuses painting
with poetry more than is fitting.
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132 MODERN PAINTING
Scribntr's MagaMtng.}
Albert Moore: ** Reading Aloud."
{By ptrmission of fV, Connai, Esq., ihg owntr of tht picture,)
Such a painter-poet of the specifically English type is Briton^
Riviere, He is a painter of animals, and as such one of the
greatest of the century. Lions and geese, royal tigers and golden
eagles, stags, dogs, foxes, and Highland cattle, he has painted
them all, and with a mastery which has nothing like it except in
Landseer. Amongst the painters of animals he stands alone
through his power of conception and his fine poetic vein, while in
all his pictures he unites the greatest simplicity with enormous
dramatic force. Accessory work is everywhere kept within the
narrowest limits, and everywhere the character of the animals
is magnificently grasped. He does not alone paint great tragic
scenes as Barye chiselled them, for he knows that beasts of prey
are usually quiet and peaceable, and only now and then obey
their savage nature. Moreover he never attempts to represent
animals performing a masquerade of humanity in their gestures
and expression, as Landseer did, nor does he transform them
into comic actors. He paints them as what they are, a symbol
of what humanity was once itself, with its elementary passions
and its natural virtues and failings. Amongst all animal painters
he is almost alone in resisting the temptation to give the lion a
consciousness of his own dignity, the tiger a consciousness of
his own savageness, the dog a consciousness of his own under-
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ENGLAND
133
standing. They neither
pose nor think about
themselves. In addition
to this he has a powerful
and impressive method,
and a deep and earnest
scheme of colour. In the
beginning of his career he
learnt most from James
Ward. Later he felt the
influence of the refined,
chivalrous, and piquant
Scotchmen Orchardson
and Pettie. But the point
in which Briton-Riviere is
altogether peculiar is that
in which he joins issue
with the painters in-
fluenced by Greece : he
introduces his animals into
a scene where there are
men of the ancient world.
Briton - Riviere is de-
Scribntr's Magaaint.}
Albert Moore : " Waiting to Cross."
{By permission of Lord Davey*Jhe owntr oftht picturt.) \
scended from a French family which found its way into England
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and he is one of
those painters — so frequent in English art — whose nature has
developed early : when he was fourteen he left school, exhibited
in the Academy when he was eighteen, painted as a Pre-
raphaelite between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, and
graduated at Oxford at seven-and- twenty. In his youth he
divided his time between art and scholarship — painting pictures
and studying Greek and Latin literature. Thus he became a
painter of animals having also an enthusiasm for the Greek
poets, and he has stood for a generation as an uncontested
lord and master on his own peculiar ground. In his first
important picture, of 1871, the comrades of Ulysse.s, changed into
swine, troop grunting round the enchantress Circe. In the
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134 MODERN PAINTING
masterpiece .'of 1872 the Prophet Daniel stands unmoved and
submissive to the will of God amid the lions roaring and showing
their teeth, ready to spring upon him in their hunger, yet re-
garding him with a mysterious fear, spellbound by the power
of his eye. While his great picture " Persepolis " makes the
appeal of a page from the philosophy of history, with its lions
roaming majestically amid the ruins of human grandeur and human
civilization, which are flooded with moonlight The picture "In
Manus Tuas, Domine," showed St. George riding solitary through
the lonely and silent recesses of a primitive forest upon a pale
white horse. He is armed in mail and has a mighty sword ; a
deep seriousness is imprinted on his features, for he has gone
forth to slay the dragon. In yet another picture, "An Old-
World Wanderer," a man of the early ages has come ashore upon
an untrodden island, and is encompassed by flocks of great white
birds, fluttering round him with curiosity and confidence, as yet
ignorant of the fear of human beings. The picture of 1891,
" A Mighty Hunter before the Lord," is one of his most poetic
night-pieces : Nimrod is returning home, and beneath the silvery
silence of the moon the dead and dying creatures which he has
laid low upon the wide Assyrian plain are tended and bemoaned
by their mates.
Between whiles he painted subjects which were not borrowed
from ancient history, illustrating the friendship between man and
dog, as Landseer had done before him. For instance, in " His
Only Friend " there is a poor lad who has broken down at the
last milestone before the town and is guarded by his dog. In
" Old Playfellows " again one of the playmates is a child, who is
sick and leans back quietly in an armchair covered with cushions.
His friend the great dog has one paw resting on the child's lap,
and looks up with a pensive expression, such as Landseer alone
has painted in previous times. But in this style he reached
his highest point in "Sympathy." No work of Briton-Riviere's
has become more popular than this picture of the little maiden
who has forgotten her key and is sitting helpless before the
house-door, consoled by the dog who has laid his head upon her
shoulder.
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ENGLAND 137
Since the days of Reynolds English art has shown a most
vivid originality in such representations of children. English
picture-books for children are in these days the most beautiful
in the world, and the marvellous fairy-tales and fireside stories
of Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway have made their way
throughout the whole Continent. How well these English
draughtsmen know the secret of combining truth with the most
exquisite grace ! How touching are these pretty babies, how
angelically innocent these little maidens ! Frank eyes, blue as
the flowers of the periwinkle, gaze at you with no thought of
their being looked at in return. The naYve astonishment of the
little ones, their frightened mien, their earnest look absently
fixed upon the sky, the first tottering steps of a tiny child
and the mobile grace of a schoolgirl, all are rendered in these
prints with the most tender intimacy of feeling. And united
with this there is a delicate and entirely modern sentiment for
scenery, for the fascination of bare autumn landscapes robbed
of their foliage, for sunbeams and the budding fragrance of
spring. Everything is idyllic, poetic, and touched by a congenial
breath of tender melancholy.
And this aerial quality, this delicacy and innocent grace and
tenderness, is not confined alone to such representations of children,
but is peculiar to English painting. Even when perfectly
ordinary subjects from modern life are in question, the basis
of this art is, as in the first half of the century, by no means
the sense for what is purely pictorial, by no means that naturalistic
pantheism which inspires the modern French, but rather a sense
for what is moral or ethical. The painter seldom paints merely
for the joy of painting, and the numberless technical questions
which play such an important part in French art are here only
of secondary importance. It accords with the character and
taste of the people that their artists have rather a poetic design
than one which is properly pictorial. The conception is some-
times allegorical and subtile to the most exquisite fineness of
point, sometimes it is vitiated by sentimentality, but it is never
purely naturalistic ; and this qualified realism, this realism with
a poetic strain to keep it ladylike, set English art, especially in
VOL. III. 10
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138 MODERN PAINTING
the years when Bastien-Lepage and Roll were at their zenith,
in sharp opposition to the art of France. In those days the
life-size artisan picture, the prose of life, and the struggle for
existence reigned almost exclusively in the Parisian Salon,
whereas in the Royal Academy everything was quiet and cordial ;
an intimate, inoffensive, and heartfelt cheerfulness was to be
found in the pictures upon its walls, as if none of these painters
knew of the existence of such a place as Whitechapel. A con-
nection between pictures and poems is still popular, and some
touching trait, some tender episode, some expression of softness,
is given to subjects drawn from the ordinary life of the people.
Painters seek in every direction after pretty rustic scenes, moving
incidents, or pure emotions. Instead of being harsh and rugged
in their sense of truth and passion, they glide lightly away from
anything ugly, bringing together the loveliest and most beautiful
things in nature, and creating elegies, pastorals, and idylls from
the passing events of life. Their method of expression is
fastidious and finished to a nicety ; their vision of life is smiling
and kindly, though it must not be supposed that their optimism
has now anything in common with the genre picture of 1850.
The genre painters from Wilkie to Collins epitomized the actual
manners of the present in prosaic compositions. But here the
most splendid poetry breaks out, as indeed it actually does in
the midst of ordinary life. If in that earlier period English
painting was awkward in narration, vulgar, and didactic, it is
now tasteful, refined, beautiful, and of distinction. The philis-
tinism of the pictures of those days has been finally stripped
away, and the humorously anecdotic genre entirely overcome.
The generation of tiresome narrative artists has been followed
by painter-poets of delicacy and exquisite tenderness of feeling.
Two masters who died young and have a peculiarly captivat-
ing individuality, George Mason and Fred Walker, stand at
the head of this, • the most novel phase of English painting.
Alike in the misfortune of premature death, they are also united
by a bond of sympathy in their taste and sentiment If there
be truth in what Theophile Gautier once said in a beautiful
poem, " Tout passe, Tart robuste seul a V^temiti'' neither of
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ENGLAND
141
them will enter the
kingdom of immor-
tality. That might
be applied to them
which Heine said
of Leopold Robert :
they have purified
the peasant in the
purgatory of their
art so that nothing
but a glorified body
remains. As the
Preraphaelites
wished to give ex-
quisite precision to
the world of dream,
Walker and Mason
have taken this
precision from the
world of reality,
•endowing it with
a refined subtilty
which in truth it
has not got. Their
pictures breathe'
only of the bloom
and essence of
things, and in them
nature is deprived
of her strength and
marrow, and paint-
ing of her peculiar
<iualities, which are
changed in to
coloured breath and tinted dream. They may be reproached
with an excess of nervous sensibility, an effort after style by
which modern truth is recast, a morbid tendency to suave
U.D.MUltrsc,
Mason; "The Milkmaid."
(By permission of Mtssrs. P. <S* D. Colnaghi^ tfu owners oj
the copyright.)
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MODERN PAINTING
[R. Macbeth sc.
Mason : " The Unwilling Playmate.'*
(By ptrmission of Mr. Robert Dunlhome, tht owmer of tht copyright,)
mysticism. Nevertheless their works are the most original
products of English painting during the last twenty years, and
by a strange union of realism and poetic feeling they have
exercised a deeply penetrative influence upon Continental art
" ^quam semper in rebus arduis servare mentem ** might be
chosen as a motto for George Mason's biography. Brought up
in prosperous circumstances, he first became a doctor, but when
he was seven-and-twenty he went to Italy to devote himself to
painting; here he received the news that he was ruined. His
father had lost everything, and he found himself entirely deprived
of means, so that his life became a long struggle against hunger.
He bound himself to dealers, and provided animal pieces by
the dozen for the smallest sums. In a freezing room he sat
with his pockets empty, worked until it was dark, and crept
into bed when Rome went to feast. After two years, however,
he had at last saved the money necessary for taking him back
to England, and he settled with his young wife in Wetley
Abbey. This little village, where he lived his simple life in the
deepest seclusion, became for him what Barbizon had been for
Millet He wandered by himself amongst the fields, and painted
the valleys of Wetley with the tenderness of feeling with which
Corot painted the outskirts of Fontainebleau. He saw the
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I
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ENGLAND 145
ghostly mists lying upon the moors, saw the peasants returning
from the plough and the reapers from the field, noted the
children, in their life so closely connected with the change of
nature. And yet his peasant pictures more resemble the works
of Perugino than those of Bastien-Lepage. The character of
their landscape is to some extent responsible for this. For
the region he paints, in its lyrical charm, has kinship with
the hills in the pictures of Perugino. Here there grow the
same slender trees upon a delicate, undulating soil. But the
silent, peaceful, and resigned human beings who move across
it have also the tender melancholy of Umbrian Madonnas.
Mason's realism is merely specious ; it consists in the external
point of costume. There are really no peasants of such slender
growth, no English village maidens with such rosy faces and
such coquettish Holland caps. Mason divests them of all the
heaviness of earth, takes, as it were, only the flower-dust from
reality. The poetic grace of Jules Breton might be recalled,
were it not that Mason works with more refinement and
subtilty, for his idealism was unconscious, and never resulted
in an empty, professional painting of beauty.
When he painted his finest pictures he suffered from very
bad health, and his works have themselves the witchery of
disease, the fascinating beauty of consumption. . He painted
with such delicacy and refinement because sickness had made
him weak and delicate ; he divested his peasant men and women
of everything fleshly, so that nothing but a shadow of them
remained, a spirit vibrating in fine, dying, and elusive chords.
In his " Evening Hymn " girls are singing in the meadow ; to
judge from their dresses they should be the daughters of the
peasantry, but one fancies them religious enthusiasts, brought
together upon this mysterious and sequestered corner of the
earth by a melancholy world-weariness, by a yearning after the
mystical. Fragile as glass, sensitive to the ends of their fingers,
and, one might say, morbidly spiritual, they breathe out their
souls in song, encompassed by the soft shadows of the evening
twilight, and uttering all the exquisite tenderness of their subtile
temperament in the hymn they chant. Another of his pastoral
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MODERN PAINTING
iti. Macbeth #c.
Walker: "Marlow Ferry."
{By ptrmission of Mr, Robert Dunthomtf tht owner 0/ the copyright,)
symphonies is " The Harvest Moon." Some labourers are
stepping homewards after their day's work. The moon is rising,
and casts its soft, subdued hght upon the dark hills and the
slender trees, in the silvery leaves of which the evening wind is
playing. " The Gander," " The Young Anglers," and. " The Cast
Shoe " are captivating through the same delicacy and the same
mood of peaceful resignation. George Mason is an astonishing
artist, almost always guilty of exaggeration, but always seductive.
Life passes in his pictures like a beautiful summer's day, and
with the accompaniment of soft music. A peaceful, delicate
feeling, something mystical, bitter-sweet, and suffering, lives
beneath the light and tender veil of his pictures. They affect
the nerves like a harmonica, and lull one with low and softly
veiled harmonies. Many of the melancholy works of Israels
have a similar eflfect, only Israels is less refined, has less of
distinction and — more of truth.
This suavity of feeling is characteristic in an almost higher
degree of Fred Walker, an artist sensitive and never satisfied
with himself. Every one of his pictures gives the impression
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ENGLAND 147
of deep and quiet reverie ; everywhere a kind of mood, like
that in a fairy tale, colours the ordinary events of life in his
works, an effect produced by his refined composition of forms
and colours. In his classically simple art Mason was influenced
by the Italians, and especially the Umbrians. Walker drew a
similar inspiration from the works of Millet. Both the English-
man and the Frenchman died in the same year, the former on
January 20th, 1875, in Barbizon, the latter on June sth, in
Scotland ; and yet in a certain sense they stand at the very
opposite poles of art. Walker is graceful, delicate, and tender;
Millet forceful, healthy, and powerful. ** To draw sublimity
from what is trivial " was the aim of both, and they both reached
it by the same path. All their predecessors had held truth as
the foe of beauty, and had qualified shepherds and shepherdesses,
ploughmen and labourers, for artistic treatment by forcing upon
them the smiling grace and the strained humour of genre
painting. Millet and Fred Walker broke with the frivolity
of this elder school of painting, which had seen matter for
jesting, and only that, in the life of the rustic ; they asserted
that in the life of the toiler nothing was more deserving of
artistic representation than his toil. They always began by
reproducing life as they saw it, and by disdaining, in their effort
after truth, all artificial embellishment ; they came to recognize,
both of them at the same time, a dignity in the human frame,
and grandiose forms and classic lines in human movement, which
no one had discovered before. With the most pious reverence
for the exact facts of life, there was united that greatness of
conception which is known as style.
Fred Walker, the Tennyson of painting, was born in
London in 1840, and had scarcely left school before the galleries
of ancient art in the British Museum became his favourite place
of resort. Drawings for wood-engraving were his first works,
and with Millet in France he has the chief merit of having
put fresh life into the traditional style of English wood-cut
engraving, so that he is honoured by the young school of
engravers in wood-cut as their lord and master. His first, and
as yet unimportant, drawings appeared in i860 in a periodica
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MODERN FAINTING
[/?. Macb€tk 8C.
Walker: "A Flood in the Fens."
(fiy permission of Mr, Robert Dunthonu, the owner of the copyright.)
called Once a Week, for which Leech, Millais, and others also
made drawings. Shortly after this d^but he was introduced
to Thackeray, then the editor of Comhill, and he undertook
the illustrations with Millais. In these plates he is already
seen in his charm, grace, and simplicity. His favourite season
is the tender spring, when the earth is clothed with young
verdure, and the sunlight glances over the naked branches, and
the children pluck the first flowers which have shot up beneath
their covering of snow.
His pictures give pleasure by virtue of the same qualities —
delicacy of drawing, bloom of colouring, and a grace which is not
affected in spite of its Grecian rhythm.
Walker was the first to introduce that delicate rosy red which
has since been popular in English painting. His method of
vision is as widely removed from that of Manet as from Couture's
brown sauce. The surface of every one of his pictures resembles
a rare jewel in its delicate finish : it is soft, and gives the
sense of colour and of refined and soothing harmony. His first
important work, *' Bathers,'* was exhibited in 1867 at the
Royal Academy, where works of his appeared regularly during
the next five years. About a score of young people are standing
on the verge of a deep and quiet English river, and are just
about to refresh themselves in the tide after a hot August day.
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ENGLAND
149
i^AwiA
Jitiopfr m.
Walker: "The Bathers."
{By permission of Messrs. Thomas Agrnw cJ* 5om5, the owners oj the copyright.)
Some, indeed, are already in the water, while others are sitting
upon the grass and others undressing. The frieze of the
Parthenon is recalled, so plastic is the grace of these young
frames, and the style and repose of the treatment of lines,
which are such as may only be found in Puvis de Chavannes.
In his next picture, " The Vagrants," he represented a group
of gipsies camping round a fire in the midst of an English
landscape. A mother is nursing her child, while to the left a
woman is standing plunged in thought, and to the right a lad is
throwing wood upon the faintly blazing fire. Here, too, the figures
are all drawn severely after nature and yet have the air of Greek
statues. There is no modern artist who has united in so un-
forced a manner actuality and fidelity to nature with " the noble
simplicity and quiet grandeur" of the antique. In a succeeding
picture of 1870, "The Plough," a labourer is striding over the
ground ploughing. The long day is approaching its end, and the
moon stands silvery in the sky. Far into the distance the field
stretches away, and the heavy tread of the horses mingles in the
stillness of evening with the murmur of the stream which flows
round the grassy ridge, making its soft complaint. "Man
goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening"
is its thoroughly English motto. The same still mournfulness
of sunset he painted in that work of marvellous tenderness " The
Old Gate." The peace of dusk is resting upon a soft and gentle
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landscape. A lady who is the owner of a country mansion and
is dressed like a widow has just stepped out from the garden gate,
accompanied by her maid, who is in the act of shutting it ;
children are playing on the steps, and a couple of labourers are
going past in front and look towards the lady of the house. It is
nothing except the meeting of certain persons, a scene such as
takes place every day, and yet even here there is a subtilty and
tenderness which raise the event from the prose of ordinary life
into a mysterious world of poetry.
In his later period he deviated more and more towards a
fragrant lyricism. In his great picture of 1872, "The Harbour
of Refuge," the background is formed by one of those peaceful
buildings where the aged poor pass the remainder of their
days in meditative rest. The sun is sinking and there is a
rising moon. The red-tiled roof stands out clear against the
quiet evening sky, while upon the terrace in front, over which
the tremulous yellow rays of the setting sun are shed, an old
woman with a bowed figure is walking, guided by a graceful
girl who steps lightly forward. It is the old contrast between
day and night, youth and age, strength and decay. Yet in
Walker there is no opposition after all. For as light mingles
with the shadows in the twilight, this young and vigorous
woman who paces in the evening, holding the arm of the aged
in mysterious silence, has at the moment no sense of her youth,
but is rather filled with that melancholy thought underlying
Goethe's ''Warte nur baldel' "Wait awhile and thou shalt rest
too." Her eyes have a strange gaze, as though she were looking
into vacancy in mere absence of mind. And upon the other side
of the picture this theme of the transient life of humanity is still
further developed. Upon a bench in the midst of a verdant
lawn covered with daisies a group of old men are sitting
meditatively near a hedge of hawthorn luxuriant in blossom.
Above the bench there stands an old statue casting a clearly
defined shadow upon the golden sand, as if to point to the
contrast between imperishable stone and the unstable race of
men, fading away like the autumn leaves. Well in the fore-
ground a labourer is mowing down the tender spring grass
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ENGLAND 153
with a scythe — a strange, wild, and rugged figure, a reaper
whose name is Death.
It was not long before evening drew on for the painter, and
Death, the mighty reaper, laid him low.
Of a nervous and sensitive temperament, Walker had one of
those natures which find their way with difficulty through this
rude world of fact Those little things which he had the art
of painting so beautifully, and which occupy such an important
place in his work, had, in another sense, more influence upon
his life than ought to have been the case. While Mason faced
all unpleasantnesses with stoical indifference. Walker allowed
himself to be disturbed and hindered in his work by every
failure and every sharp wind of criticism. In addition to that
he was, like Mason, a consumptive subject. A residence in
Algiers merely banished the insidious disease for a short time.
Amongst the last works, which he exhibited in 1875, a con-
siderable stir was made by a drawing called "The Unknown
Land : " a vessel with naked men is drawing near the shores
of a wide and peaceful island bathed in a magical light. Soon
afterwards Walker had himself departed to that unknown land :
he died in Scotland when he was five-and-thirty. His body
was brought to the little churchyard at Cookham on the
banks of the Thames. In this village Fred Walker is buried
amid the fair river landscape which he so loved and so often
painted.
After the Preraphaelite revolution, the foundation of the
school of Walker indicated the last stage of English art. His
influence was far greater than might be supposed from the small
number of his works, and fifty per cent, of the English pictures
in every exhibition would perhaps never have been painted if
he had not been born. A national element long renounced, that
old English sentiment which once inspired the landscapes of
Gainsborough and the scenes of Morland, and was lost in the
hands of Wilkie and the genre painters, lives once more in
Fred Walker. He adapted it to the age by adding some-
thing of Tennyson's passion for nature. There is a touch of
symbolism in that old gate which he painted in the beautiful
VOL. III. 1 1
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154
MODERN PAINTING
picture of 1870. He
and Mason opened
it so that English
art might pass into
this new domain,
where musical sen-
timent is everything,
where one is buried
in sweet reveries at
the sight of a flock
of geese driven by
a young girl, or
a labourer stepping
behind his plough,
or a child playing
free from care with
pebbles at the
water's edge. Their
disciples are perhaps
healthier, or, should
one say, ** less re-
fined " — in other
words, not quite so sensitive and hyper-aesthetic as those who
opened the old gate. They seem physically more robust, and
can better face the sharp air of reality. They no longer dissolve
painting altogether into music and poetry; they live more in
the world at every hour, and not merely when the sun is
setting, but also when the prosaic daylight exposes objects in
their material heaviness. But the tender ground-tone, the effort
to seize nature in soft phases, is the same in all. Like bees,
they suck from reality only its sweets. The earnest, tender,
and deeply heartfelt art of Walker has influenced them all.
Evening when work is over, the end of summer, twilight,
autumn, the pale and golden sky, and the dead leaves are the
things which have probably made the most profound impression
on the English spirit. The hour when toil is laid aside, and
rest begins and people seek their homes, and the season when
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BouGHTON : " Snow in Spring.'
(By ptrmisswM of ihg Artist.)
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ENGLAND
'55
fires are first lighted are
the hour and the season
most beloved by this
people, which, with all its
nide energy, is yet so
tender and full of feeling.
Repose to the point of
enervation and the stage
where it passes into gentle
melancholy is the theme
of their pictures — this, and
not toil.
How many have been
painted in the last thirty
years in which people are
returning from their work
of an evening across the
country ! The people in
the big towns look upon
the country with the eyes
of a lover, especially those
parts of it which lie near
the town ; not the scenes painted by Raffaelli, but the parks
and public gardens. Soft, undulating valleys and gently swelling
hills are spread around, the flowers are in bloom, and the
leaves glance in the sunshine. And over this country, with its
trim gravel paths and its green, luxuriant lawns, there comes
a well-to-do people. Even the labourers seem in good ease
as they go home across the flowery meadows.
George H. Boughton is one of the most graceful and refined
amongst Walker's followers. By birth and descent a country-
man of Crome and Cotman, he passed his youth in America,
worked several years in Paris from 1853, and in 1863 settled
in London, where he is exceedingly active as a draughtsman, a
writer, and a painter. His charming illustrations for Harpet^s
Magazine, where he also published his delicate story The
Return of the Mayflower, are well known. As a painter, too,
- VArtJ] iSwainsc,
Boughton : " Green Leaves among the Sere."
{By permission of thg Artist,)
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156
MODERN PAINTING
VAfLk
Boughton: "The Bearers of the Burden."*
(fiy ptrmission of tht Artist.)
his brush was only occupied by pleasant things, whether be-
longing to the past or the present There is something in him
both of the delicacy of Gainsborough and of the poetry of
Memlinc. He delights in the murmur of brooks and the rustle of
leaves, in fresh children and pretty young women in aesthetically
fantastic costume ; he loves everything delicate, quiet, and
fragrant. And for this reason he also takes delight in old
legends entwined with blossoms, and attains a most harmonious
effect when he places shepherds and kings' daughters of story
and steel-clad knights and squires in his charming and entirely
modern landscapes. Almost always it is autumn, winter, or
at most the early spring in his pictures. The boughs of the
trees are generally bare, though sometimes a tender, pointed
yellowish verdure is budding upon them. At times the mist
of November hovers over the country like a delicate veil ; at
times the snowflakes fall softly, or the October sun gleams
through the leafless branches.
Moreover a feeling for the articulation of lines, for a balance
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ENGLAND
157
VAri:\
Houghton : " A Breath of Wind."
iBy permission of tht Artist.)
[Artist sc.
of composition, unforced, and yet giving a character of dis-
tinction, is peculiar to him in a high degree. In 1877 he
had in the Royal Academy the charming picture "A Breath
of Wind." Amid a soft landscape with slender trees move
the thoroughly Grecian figures of the more shapely English
peasants, whilst the tender evening light is shed over the
gently rising hills. His picture of 1878 he named "Green
Leaves among the Sere : " a group of children, in the midst of
whom the young mother herself looks like a child, are seated
amid an autumn landscape, where the leaves fall, and the sky
is shrouded in wintry grey. In the picture "Snow in Spring"
may be seen a party of charming girls — little modern Tanagra
figures — whom the sun has tempted into the air to search for
the earliest woodland snowdrops under the guidance of a damsel
still in her 'teens. Having just reached a secret corner of the
wood, they are standing with their flowers in their hands
surrounded by tremulous boughs, when a sudden snowstorm
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158 MODERN FAINTING
overtakes them. Thick white flakes alight upon the slender
boughs, and combine with the light green leaves and pale
reddish dresses of 'the children in making a delicate harmony
of colour. Among his legendary pictures the poetic "Love
Conquers all Things " in particular is known in Germany : a
wild shepherd's daughter sits near her flock, and the son of a
king gazes into her eyes lost in dream.
Boughton is not the only painter of budding girlhood. All
English literature has a tender feminine trait. Tennyson is the
poet most widely read, and he has won all hearts chiefly through
his portraits of women : Adeline, Eleanore, Lilian, and the May
Queen — that delightful gallery of pure and noble figures. In
English painting, too, it is seldom men who are represented, but
more frequently women and children, especially little maidens
in their fresh pure witchery.
Belonging still to the older period there is Philip H. Calderon^
an exceedingly fertile although lukewarm and academical artist^
in whose blood is a good deal of eff'eminate Classicism. When
his name appears in a catalogue it means that the spectator
will be led into an artificial region peopled with pretty girls-
beings who are neither sad nor gay, and who belong neither to
the present nor to ancient times, to no age in particular and to
no clime. Whenever such ethereal girlish figures wear the costume
of the Directoire period, Marcus Stone is their father. He is like-
wise one of the older men whose first appearance was made
before the time of Walker. His young ladies part with broken
hearts from a beloved suitor, turned away by their father, and
save the honour of their family by giving their hand to a wealthy
but unloved aspirant, or else they are solitary and lost in tender
reveries. In his earliest period Marcus Stone had a preference
for interiors ; rich Directoire furniture and objects of art indicate
the year in which the narrative takes place with exactness.
Later, he took a delight in placing his Rococo ladies and
gentlemen in the open air, upon the terraces of old gardens or
in sheltered alleys. All his pictures are pretty, the faces, the
figures, and the accessories ; in relation to them one may
use the adjective " pretty " in its positive, comparative, or
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ENGLAND i6i
superlative degree. In England Marcus Stone is the favourite
painter of "sweethearts," and it cannot be easy to go so near
the boundaries of candied genre painting and yet always to
preserve a certain noblesse.
Amongst the younger men G. D. Leslie, the son of Charles
Leslie, has specially the secret of interpreting innocent feminine
beauty, that somewhat predetermined but charming grace derived
from Gainsborough and the eighteenth century. A young lady
who has lately been married is paying a visit to her earlier
school friends, and is gazed upon as though she were an angel
by these charming girls. Or his pretty maidens have ensconced
themselves beneath the trees, or stand on the shore watching a
boat at sunset, or amuse themselves from a bridge in a park by
throwing flowers into the water and looking dreamily after them
as they float away. Leslie's pictures, too, are very pretty and
poetic, and have much silk in them and much sun, while the
soft, pale method of painting, so highly aesthetic in its delicate
attenuation of colour, corresponds with the delicacy of their
purport
P. G, Morris, not less delicate in feeling and execution, be-
came specially known by a "Communion in Dieppe." Directly
facing the spectator a train of pretty communicants move upon
the seashore, assuming an air of dignified superiority, like young
ladies from Brighton or Folkestone. A bluish light plays over
the white dresses of the girls and over the blue jackets of the
sailors lounging about the quay ; it fills the pale blue sky with
a misty vibration and glances sportively upon the green waves
of the sea. " The Reaper and the Flowers " was a thoroughly
English picture, a graceful allegory after the fashion of Fred
Walker. On their way from school a party of children meet
at the verge of a meadow an old peasant going home from
his day's work with a scythe upon his shoulder. In the
dancing step of the little ones may be seen the influence
of Greek statues; they float along as if borne by the zephyr,
with a rhythmical motion which real school-children do not
usually have. But the old peasant coming towards them is
intended to recall the contrast between youth and age, as
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i62 MODERN PAINTING
in Fred Walker's "Harbour of Refuge;" while the scythe
glittering in the last rays of the setting sun signifies the
scythe of Fate, the scythe of death which does not even spare
the child.
And thus the limits of English painting are defined. It
always reveals a certain conflict between fact and poetry, reverie
and life. For whenever the scene does not admit of a directly
ethical interpretation, refuge is invariably taken in lyricism. The
wide field which lies between, where powerful works are nourished,
works which have their roots in reality, and derive their life
from it alone, has not been definitely conquered by English
art. England is the greatest producer and consumer of the
earth, and her people press the marrow out of things as no
other have ever done: and yet this land of industry knows
nothing of pictures in which work is being accomplished ;
this country, which is a network of railway lines, has never
seen a railway painted. Even horses are less and less fre-
quently represented in English art, and sport finds no re-
pression there whatever. Much as the Englishman loves it
from a sense of its wholesomeness, he does not consider it
sufficiently aesthetic to be painted, a matter upon which Wilkie
Collins enlarges in an amusing way in his book Man and Wife,
And in English pictures there are no poor, or, at any rate,
none who are wretched in the extreme. For although the
Chelsea Pensioners were a favoured theme in painting, there
were none of them miserable and heavy-laden ; they were
rather types of the happy poor who were carefully tended;
If English painters are otherwise induced to represent the
poor, they depict a room kept in exemplary order, and
endeavour to display some touching or admirable trait in
honest and admirable people. In fact people seem to be good
and honourable wherever they are found. Everywhere there is
content and humility, even in misfortune. Even where actual
need is represented, it is only done in the effort to give
expression to what is moving in certain dispensations of fate,
and to create a lofty and conciliating effect by the contrast
between misfortune and man's noble trust in God.
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ENGLAND 165
John R. Retd, a Scotchman by birth, but residing in London,
has treated scenes from life upon the seacoast in this manner.
How different his works are from the tragedies of Joseph
Israels, or the grim naturalism of Michael Ancher ! He occu-
pies himself only with the bright side of life, with its colour
and sunshine, not with the dark side, with its toils. He paints
the inhabitants of the country in their Sunday best, as they sit
telling stories, or as they go a-hunting, or regale themselves in
the garden of an inn. The old rustics who sit happy with
their pipes and beer in his "Cricket Match" are typical of
everything that he has painted.
And even when, once in a way, a more gloomy trait appears
in his pictures, it is there only that the light may shine the
more brightly. The poor old flute-player who sits homeless
upon a bench near the house is placed there merely to show
how well off are the children who are hurrying merrily home
after school. His picture of 1890, indeed, treated a scene of
shipwreck, but a passage from a poet stood beneath ; there
was not a lost sailor to be seen, and all the tenderness of the
artist is devoted to the pretty children and the young women
gazing with anxiety and compassion across the sea.
Frank Holl was in the habit of giving his pictures a more
lachrymose touch, together with a more sombre and ascetic
harmony of colour. He borrowed his subjects from the life of
the humble classes, always searching moreover for melancholy
features ; he took delight in representing human virtue in mis-
fortune, and for the sake of greater effect he frequently chose a
verse from the Bible as the title. Thus the work with which
he first won the English public was a picture exhibited in 1869:
" The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the
name of the Lord." A family of five brothers and sisters, who
have just lost their mother, are assembled round the breakfast-
table in a poorly furnished room. One sister is crying, another
is sadly looking straight before her, whilst a third is praying
with folded hands. The younger brother, a sailor, has just
reached home from a voyage, to close his dying mother's eyes,
and the eldest of all, a young and earnest curate, is endeavouring
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1 66
MODERN FAINTING
to console his brother
and sisters with the
words of Job.
The next picture,
exhibited in 1 87 1, he
called " No Tidings
from the Sea," and
represented in it a
fisherman's family —
grandmother, mother,
and child—who in a
cheerless room are
anxiously expecting
the return of a sailor.
"Leaving Home"
showed four people
sitting on a bench
outside a waiting-
room at a railway
station. To awaken
the spectator's pity
"Third Class" is writ-
ten in large letters
upon the window just above their heads. The principal figure
is a lady dressed in black, who is counting, in a somewhat
obtrusive manner, the little money which she still has left
In the picture " Necessity knows no Law " a poor woman
with a child in her arms has entered a pawnshop to borrow
money on her wedding-ring ; in another, women of the poorer
class are to be seen walking along with their soldier sons
and husbands who have been called out on active service.
One of them clasps tightly to her breast her little <:hild, the
only one still remaining to her in life, whilst an aged widow
presses the hand of her son with the sad presentiment that,
even if he comes back to her, she will probably not have
long to live after his return. Not only did Frank Holl paint
stories for his countrymen, but he also painted them big in
i. ■
^
i
^■mi
1
i
Ltipzig: iie§mattM.]
Reid: "The Rival Grandfathers."
{.By ptrmissioM of ttu Corporation of Liverpool^ the owners
of the picture.)
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ENGLAND
169
L'j4rt.}
Holl: "Leaving Home."
IRamus bc.
majuscule characters which were legible without spectacles,
and he partially owed his splendid successes to this cheap
sentimentality.
Almost everywhere the interest of subject still plays the
first part, and this slightly lachrymose trait bordering on genre^
this lyrically tender or allegorically subtile element, which runs
through English figure pictures, would easily degenerate into
vaporous enervation in another country. In England portrait-
painting, which now, as in the days of Reynolds, is the greatest
title of honour possessed by English art, invariably maintains
its union with direct reality. By acknowledgment portrait-
painting in the present day is exceedingly earnest: it admits
of no decorative luxuriousness, no sport with hangings and
draperies, no pose; and English likenesses have this severe
actuality in the highest degree. Stiff-necked obstinacy, sanguine
resolution, and muscular force of will are often spoken of as
an Englishman's national characteristics, and a trace of these
qualities is also betrayed in English portrait-painting. The
self-reliance of the English is far too great to suffer or demand
VOL. III.
12
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1 70 MODERN FAINTING
any servile habit of flattery : everything is free from pose,
plain, and simple. Let the subject be the weather-beaten figure
of an old sailor or the dazzling freshness of English youth, there
is a remarkable energy and force of life in all their works, even
in the pictures of children with their broad open brow, finely
chiselled nose, and assured and penetrative glance. And as
portrait-painting in England, to its own advantage and the
benefit of all art, has never been considered as an isolated
province, such pictures may be specified among the works of
the most frigid academician as well as amongst those of the
most vigorous naturalist. Frank Holl, who had such a Dussel-
dorfian tinge in his more elaborate pictures, showed at the
close of his life, in his likenesses of the engraver Samuel Cousins,
Lord Duflferin, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Wolseley, Mr.
Gladstone, the Duke of Cleveland, Sir George Trevelyan, and
Lord Spencer, a simple virility altogether wanting in his earlier
works. They had a trenchant characterization and an unforced
pose which were striking even in England. It is scarcely possible
to exhibit people more naturally, or more completely to banish
from their expression that concentrated air of attentiveness
which suggests photography and so easily intrudes into a portrait.
Even Leighton, so devoid of temperament, so entirely devoted
to the measured art of the ancients, became at once nervous
and almost brutal in his power when he painted a likeness in
place of ideal Grecian figures. His vivid and forcible portrait
of Sir Richard Burton, the celebrated African traveller, would
do honour to the greatest portrait-painter of the Continent.
Amongst portrait-painters by profession Walter Ouless will
probably merit the place of honour immediately after Watts as
an impressive exponent of character. He has assimilated much
from his master Millais — not merely the heaviness of colour,
which often has a disturbing effect in the latter, but also Millais'
powerful flight of style, always so free from false rhetoric The
chemical expert Pochin, as Ouless painted him in 1865, does
not pose in the picture nor allow himself to be disturbed in his
researches. It is a thoroughly contemporary portrait, one of
those brilliant successes which later arose in France also. The
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[C. Hnttschel 8c.
Sant: "A Floral Offering.**
(By permission of Messrs, Dowde^weU <S* DotudeswellSf the owners of the copyright,)
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ENGLAND
173
Recorder of London, Mr. Russell Gurney, he likewise painted
in his professional character and in his robes of office. In its
inflexible graveness and earnest dignity the likeness is almost
more than the portrait of an individual ; it seems the embodi-
ment of the proud English Bench resting upon the most ancient
traditions. His portrait of Cardinal Manning had the same con-
vincing power of observation, the same large and sure technique.
The soft light plays upon the ermine and the red stole, and
falls full upon the fine, austere, and noble face.
Besides Ouless mention may be made from among the great
number of portrait-painters of/. /. Shannon with his powerful
and firmly-painted likenesses, of James Sant with his sincere
and energetic portraits of women, of Mouat Loudan with his
pretty pictures of children, and of the many-sided Charles W.
Furse. Hubert Herkomer was the most celebrated in Germany,
and is probably the most skilful of the young men whom The
Graphic brought into eminence in the seventies.
The career of Hubert Herkomer is amongst those adventurous
ones which become less and less frequent in the nineteenth
century ; there are not many who have risen so rapidly to fame
and fortune from such modest circumstances. His father was a
carver of sacred images in the little Bavarian village of Waal,
where Hubert was born in 1849. In 1851 the enterprising
Bavarian tried his fortune in the New World. But there he
-did not succeed in making progress, and in 1857 the family
appeared in England, at Southampton. Here he fought his
way honestly at the bench where he carved and as a journey-
man worker, whilst his wife gave lessons in music. A commission
to carve Peter Vischer's four evangelists in wood brought him
with his son to Munich, where they occupied a room in the
back buildings of a master-carpenter's house, in which they slept,
cooked, and worked. In the preparatory class of the Munich
Academy the younger Herkomer received his first teaching, and
began to draw from the nude, the antique serving as model.
At a frame-maker's in Southampton he gave his first exhibition,
and drew illustrations for a comic paper. With the few pence
which he saved from these earnings he went to London, where
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174 MODERN PAINTING
he lived from hand to mouth with a companion as poor as him-
self. He cooked, and his friend scoured the pans ; meanwhile
he worked as a mason on the frieze of the South Kensington-
Museum, and hired himself out for the evenings as a zither-
player. Then The Grapliic became his salvation, and after his-
drawings had made him known he soon had success with his-
paintings. "After the Toil of the Day," a picture which he
exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1873— a thoughtful scene
from the village life of Bavaria, carried out after the manner
of Fred Walker — found a purchaser immediately. He was
then able to make a home for his parents in the village of
Bushey, which he afterwards glorified in the picture " Our
Village," and he began his masterpiece "The Last Muster,'*^
which obtained in 1878 the great medal at the World Exhibition^
in Paris. Since then he found the eyes of the English public
fixed upon him. There followed at first a series of pictures
in which he proceeded upon the lines of Fred Walker's poetic
realism : " Eventide," a scene in the Westminster Union ; " The
Gloom of Idwal," a romantic mountain picture from North Wales ;
"God's Shrine," a lonely Bavarian hill-side path, with a shrine
and peasants praying ; " Der Bittgang," a group of country"
people praying for harvest ; " Contrasts," a picture of English
ladies surrounded by school-children in the Bavarian mountains.
At the same time he became celebrated as a portrait-painter,,
his first successes in this field being the likenesses of Wagner
and Tennyson, Archibald Forbes, his own father, John Ruskin,.
Stanley, and the conductor Hans Richter. And he reached the
summit of his international fame when his portrait of Miss
Grant, "The Lady in White," appeared in 1886; all Europe-
spoke of it at the time, and it called forth entire bundles of:
poems, anecdotes, biographies, and romances. From that time
he advanced in his career with rapid strides.
The University of Oxford appointed him Professor of the
Fine Arts. He opened a School of Art and had etchings,
copper engravings, and engravings in mezzotint produced by his
pupils under his guidance. He wrote articles in the London
papers upon the social question, and political economy, and
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FuRSE Frontispiece to "Stories and Interludes."
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ENGLAND
177
Magaziiu of Art. '\
Herkomer : John Ruskin.
(.By permission of the Artist,)
all manner of subjects, an article
signed with Herkomer's name
being always capable of creating
interest He has his own theatre,
and produces in it operas of
which he writes the text and
the music, and manages the re-
hearsals and the scenery, beside
playing the leading parts.
Yet it is just his likenesses
of women, the foundations of
his fame, which do not seem in
general entirely to justify the
painter s great reputation. Miss
Grant was certainly a captiva-
ting woman, and she broke
men's hearts wherever she made
her appearance. People looked
again and again into the brilliant brown eyes with which
she looked so composedly before her ; they were overwhelmed
by her austere and lofty virginal beauty. " The Lady in Black
(An American Lady) " made a yet more piquant and spiritualized
eflfect. Here was the unopened bud, and there the woman who
has had experience of the delights and disappointments of life.
Here was unapproachable pride, and there a trait of distinction
and of suffering, an almost weary carriage of the body. There
will certainly be an interesting gallery of beauty if Herkomer
unites these " types of women " in a series. But even in the
first picture how much of all the admiration excited was due
to the painter and how much to the model? At bottom.
Miss Grant made a success because she was such a pretty
girL The arrangement of white against white was nothing new :
Whistler, a far greater artist, had already painted a " White
Girl" in 1863, and it was a much greater work of art, though
on account of the attractiveness of the model being less
powerful it triumphed only in the narrower circles of artists.
Bastien-Lepage, who set himself the same problem in his
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178 MODERN PAINTING
"Sara Bernhardt," had also run through the scale ot white with
greater sureness. And Herkomer's later pictures of women—
"The Lady in Yellow," Lady Helen Fergusson, and others — are
even less alluring considered as works of art The reserve
and evenness of the execution give his portraits a somewhat
clotted and stiff appearance. Good modelling and exceedingly
vigorous drawing may perhaps ensure great correctness in the
counterfeit of the originals, but the life of the picture vanishes
beneath the greasy technique, the soapy painting through which
materials of drapery and flesh-tints assume quite the same values.
There is nothing in it of the transparency, the rosy delicacy,
freshness, and flower-like bloom of Gainsborough's women and
girls. Herkomer appears in these pictures as a salon painter in
whom a tame but tastefully cultivated temperament is expressed
with charm. Even his landscapes with their trim peasants*
cottages and their soft moods of sunset have not enriched with
new notes the scale executed by Walker.
All the more astonishing is the earnest certainty of touch
and the robust energy which are visible in his other works.
His portraits of men, especially the one of his father, that kingly
old man with the long, white beard and the furrowed brow, take
their place beside the best productions of English portraiture,
which are chiselled, as it were, in stone. In "The Last Muster "
he showed that it is possible to be simple and yet strike a pro-
found note and even attain greatness. For there is something
great in these old warriors, who at the end of their days are
praying, having never troubled themselves over prayer during
all their lives, who have travelled so far and staked their lives
dozens of times, and are now drawing their last breath softly
upon the seats of a church. Even his more recent groups —
" The Assemblage of the Curators of the Charterhouse " and
" The Session of the Magistrates of Landsberg " — are magnificent
examples of realistic art, full of imposing strength and soundness.
In the representation of these citizens the genius of the master
who in his " Chelsea Pensioners " created one of the " Doelen
pieces" of the nineteenth century revealed itself afresh in all its
greatness.
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ENGLAND i8i
Beside portrait-painting the painting of landscape stands
now as ever in full blossom amongst the English ; not that the
artists of to-day are more consistently faithful to truth than
their predecessors, or that they seem more modern in the study
of light In the province of landscape as in that of figure-
painting far more weight is laid upon subject than on the moods
of atmosphere. If one compares the modern English painters
with Crome and Constable, one finds them wanting in boldness
and creative force ; and placed beside Monet they seem to
be diffident altogether. But a touching reverence for nature
gives almost all their pictures a singularly chaste and fragrant
charm.
Of course all the influences which have affected English art
in other respects are likewise reflected in landscape-painting.
The epoch-making activity of the Preraphaelites, the passionate
earnestness of Ruskin*s love for nature, as well as the influence
of foreign art, have all left their traces. In his own manner
Constable had spoken the last word. The principal thing in him
as in Cox was the study of atmospheric effects and of the dramatic
life of air. They neither of them troubled themselves about local
colour, but sought to render the tones which are formed under
atmospheric and meteorological influences ; they altogether sacri-
ficed the completion of the details of subject to seizing the
momentary impression. In Turner, generally speaking, it was only
the air that lived Trees and buildings, rocks and water, are
merely repoussoirs for the atmosphere ; they, are exclusively or-
dained to lead the eye through the mysterious depths of light
and shadow. The intangible absorbed what could be touched
and handled. As a natural reaction there came this Preraphaelite
landscape, and by a curious irony of chance the writer who had
done most for Turner's fame was also he who first welcomed
this Preraphaelite landscape school. Everything which the old
school had neglected now became the essential object of painting.
The landscape-painters fell in love with the earth, with the
woods and the fields ; and the more autumn resolved the wide
green harmony of nature into a sport of colours multiplied a
thousand times, the more did they love it. Thousands of
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MODERN PAINTING
BroUura photu,\
Herkomer: "Hard Times."
(By permission of the Mancheiter Art GaUery, the owners of the picture.)
things were there to be seen. First, how the foliage turned
yellow and red and brown, and then how it fell away : how
it was scattered upon a windy day, whirling in a yellow drift
of leaves ; how in still weather leaf after leaf lightly rustled to
the ground from between the wavering brown boughs. And
then when the foliage fell from the leaves and bushes the most
inviolate secrets of summer came to light ; there lay around
quantities of bright seeds and berries rich in colour, brown nuts,
smooth acorns, black and glossy sloes, and scarlet haws. In
the leafless beeches there clustered pointed beechmast, the mug-
wort bent beneath its heavy red bunches, late blackberries lay
black and brown amid the damp foliage upon the road, bil-
berries grew amid the heather, and wild raspberries bore their
dull red fruit once again. The dying ferns took a hundred
colours ; the moss shgt up like the ears of a miniature cornfield.
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MagoMm* of Art,]
Herkomer: **The L\st Muster."
{By ^trmiMioH oj Messrs. Bouasod, Valadon <S> Co., tkt owners o; the picture.)
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ENGLAND
T85
Eager as children
the landscape-
painters roamed
here and there
across the wood-
land, to discover
its treasures and its
curiosities. They
understood how to
paint a bundle of
hay with such exact-
ness that a botanist
could decide upon
the species of every
blade. One of
them lived for three
months under can-
vas, so as thoroughly
to know a landscape
of heath. Confused
through detail, they
lost their view of
the whole, and only
made a return to modernity when they came to study the
Parisian landscape-painters. Thus English art in this matter
made a curious circuit, giving and taking. First, the English
fertilized French art ; but at the time when French artists stood
under the influence of the English, the latter swerved in the
opposite direction, until they ultimately received from France
the impulse which led them back into the old way.
In accordance with these different influences, several currents
which cross each other and mingle are to be found flowing
side by side in English landscape-painting : upon one side a
spirit of prosaic reasonableness, a striving after clearness and
precision, which does not know how to sacrifice detail, and is
therefore in want of pictorial totality of effect ; on the other
side an artistic pantheism which rises at times to high lyrical
VOL. III. 13
{.Artist 8c,
Herkomer: Miss Grant.
{By p€rmts8iOH of Messrs. Obetch <S> Co., thg owners oj thg
copyright.)
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MODERN PAINTING
poetry in spite of
many dissonances.
The pictures of
Cedl Lawson lead to
the point where the
Preraphaelites begin.
The elder painters,
with their powerful
treatment and the
freedom and bold-
ness of their exe-
cution, still keep
altogether on the
lines of Constable,
whereas in later
painters, with their
minute elaboration
of all particularities,
the influence of
the Preraphaelites
becomes more and
more apparent.
Here, where Cecil Lawson ended, James Clarke Hook began,
the great patriarch who has even now lost nothing of the
strength with which he opened the eyes of the world forty
years ago to the depth of colouring and the enchanting life of
nature, even in its individual details. His pictures, especially
those sunsets which he paints with such delight, have something
devout and religious in them ; they have the effect of a prayer
or a hymn, and often possess a solemnity which is entirely
biblical, in spite of their brusque, pungent colours. In his later
period he principally devoted himself to sea-pieces, and in doing
so receded from the Preraphaelite painting of detail characteristic
of his youthful period. His pictures give one the breath of the
sea, and his sailors are old sea-wolves. All that remains from
his Preraphaelite period is that, as a rule, they carry a certain
burden of ideas.
iArtUtu,
Herkomer : <* An American Lady."
{By permission of Mr, T, McLean, the owner of the copyright.)
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ENGLAND 189
Vicat Cole, likewise one of the older school, is unequal and
less important. From many of his pictures one receives the
impression that he has directly copied Constable, and others
are bathed in dull yellow tones ; nevertheless he has sometimes
painted autumn pictures, felicitous and noble landscapes, in
which there is really a reflection of the sun of Claude Lorrain.
With much greater freedom does Colin Hunter approach
nature, and he has the secret of seizing her boldly in her most
impressive moments. The twilight, with its mysterious, inter-
penetrating tremor of colours of a thousand shades, its shine
and glimmer of water, with the sky brooding heavily above, is
what fascinates him most of all. Sometimes he represents the
dawn, as in " The Herring Market at Sea ; " sometimes the pale
tawny sunset, as in " The Gatherers of Seaweed," in the South
Kensington Museum. His men are always in a state of restless
activity, whether they are making the most of the last moments
of light or facing the daybreak with renewed energies.
Although resident in London, he and Hook are the true
-standard-bearers of the forcible Scotch school of landscape.
MacCallunty MacWhirter, and James Macbeth, with whom John
Brett, the landscape-painter of Cornwall, may be associated, are.
all gnarled, Northern personalities. Their strong, dark tones
stand often beside each other with a little hardness, but they
sum up the great glimpses of nature admirably. Their brush
has no tenderness, their spirit does not lightly yield to dreami-
ness, but they stand with both feet firmly planted on the earth,
and they clasp reality in a sound and manly fashion with both
arms. Their deeply toned pictures, with red wooden houses,
darkly painted vessels, veiled skies, and rude fishermen with all
their heart in their work, waken strong and intimate emotions.
The difference between these Scots and the tentative spirits of
the younger generation of the following of Walker and Mason
is like that between Rousseau and Dupr^ as opposed to
Chintreuil and Daubigny. The Scotch painters are sombre and
virile; they have an accent of depth and truth, and a dark,
ascetic harmony of colour. Even as landscape-painters the
English love what is delicate in nature, what is refined and
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J90 MODERN PAINTING
tender, familiar and modest : the blooming apple-trees and the
budding birches, the odour of the cowshed and the scent of hay,
the chime of sheep-bells and the hum of gnats. They seek no
great emotions, but are merely amiable and kindly, and their
pictures give one the feeling of standing at the window upon a
country excursion, and looking out at the laughing and budding
spring. In her novel North and South Mrs. Gaskell has given
charming expression to the glow of this feeling of having fled
from the smoke and dirt of industrial towns to breathe the
fresh air and see the sun go down in the prosperous country,
where the meadows are fresh and well-kept, and where the
flowers are fragrant and the leaves glance in the sunshine. In
the pictures of the Scotch artists toiling men are moving busily ;
for the English, nature merely exists that man may have his
pleasure in her. Not only is everything which renders her the
prosaic handmaiden of mankind scrupulously avoided, but all
abruptnesses of landscape, all the chance incidents of mountain
scenery ; and, indeed, they are not of frequent occurrence in
nature as she is in England. A familiar corner of the country
is preferred to wide prospects, and some quiet phase to nature
in agitation. Soft, undulating valleys, gently spreading hills con-
forming to the Hogarthian line of beauty, are especially favoured.
And should the rainbow, the biblical symbol of atonement,
stand in the sky, the landscape is for English eyes in the
zenith of its beauty.
There is Birket Forster^ one of the first and most energetic
followers of Walker — Birket Forster, whose charming woodcuts
became known in Germany likewise ; Inchbold^ who with a light
hand combines the tender green of the grasses upon the dunes
and the bright blue of the sea into a whole pervaded with light
and of great refinement ; Leader, whose bright evening land-
scapes, and Corbety whose delicate moods of morning, are so
beautiful. Mark Fis/ier, who in the matter of tones closely
follows the French landscape school, though he remains entirely
English in sentiment, has painted with great artistic power the
dreamy peace of solitary regions as well as the noisy and busy
life of the purlieus of the town. John Whitey in 1882, signalized
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ENGLAND 193
himself with a landscape, "Gold and Silver," which was bathed
in light and air. The gold was a waving cornfield threaded
by a sandy little yellow path ; the silver was the sea glittering
and sparkling in the background. Moved by Birket Forster,
Ernest Parton seeks to combine refinement of tone with incisive-
ncss in the painting of detail. His motives are usually quite
simple — a stream and a birch wood in the dusk, a range of
poplars stretching dreamily along the side of a ditch. Marshall
painted gloomy London streets enveloped in mist ; Docharty
blossoming hawthorn bushes and autumn evening with russet-
leaved oaks ; while Alfred East became the painter of spring in
all its fragrance, when the meadows are resplendent in their earliest
verdure, and the leaves of the trees which have just unfolded
stand out against the firmament in light green patches of colour,
when the limes are blossoming and the crops begin to sprout.
J/. /. Aumonier appears in the harmony of colouring, and in the
softness of his fine, light-hued tones, as the true heir of Walker
and Mason. A discreet and intimate sense of poetry pervades
his valleys with their veiled and golden light, a fertile odour of
the earth streams from his rich meadows, and from all the
luxuriant, cultivated, and peacefully idyllic tracts which he has
painted so lovingly and so well. Gregory^ Knighty Alfred Parsons^
David Fulton^ A. R, Brown ^ and St. Clair Simmons have all
something personal in their work, a bashful tenderness beneath
what is seemingly arid. The study of water-colour would alone
claim a chapter for itself. Since water-colour allows of more
breadth and unity than oil-painting, it is precisely here that
there may be found exceedingly charming and discreet concords,
softly chiming tones of delicate blue, greenish, and rosy light,
giving the most refined sensations produced by English colouring.
Of course England has a great part to play in the painting
of the sea. It is not for nothing that a nation occupies an
insular and maritime position, above all with such a sea and
upon such coasts, and the English painter knows well how to
give an heroic and poetic cast to the weather-beaten features
of the sailor. For thirty years Henry Moore, the elder brother
of Albert Moore, has been the undisputed monarch of this
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194 MODERN PAINTING
province of art. Moore began as a landscape-painter. From
1853 to 1857 he painted the glistening cliffs and secluded nooks
of Cumberland, and then the green valleys of Switzerland flooded
with the summer air and the clear morning light — quiet scenes
of rustic life, the toil of the wood-cutter and the haymaker,
somewhat as Julien Duprd handles such matters at the present
time in Paris. From 1858 he began his conquest of the sea,
and in the succeeding interval he has painted it in all the
phases of its changing life, — at times in grey and sombre morning,
at other times when the sun stands high ; at times in quietude,
at other times when the wind sweeps heavily across the waves,
when the storm rises or subsides, when the sky is clouded or
when it brightens. It is a joy to follow him in all quarters of
the world, to see how he constantly studies the waves of every
zone on fair or stormy days, amid the clearness and brilliancy
of the mirror of the sea, as amid the strife of the elements ;
as a painter he is, at the same time, always a student
of nature, and treats the sea as though he had to paint
its portrait. In the presence of his sea-pieces one has the
impression of a window opening suddenly upon the ocean.
Henry Moore measures the boundless expanse quite calmly,
like a captain calculating the chances of being able to make a
crossing. Nowhere else does there live any painter who regards
the sea so much with the ^yts of a sailor, and who combines
such eminent qualities with this objective and cool, attentive
observation, which seems to behold in the sea merely its navigable
capacity.
The painter of the river-port of London and the arm of the
Thames is William L. Wyllie^ whose pictures unite so much
bizarre grandeur with so much precision. One knows the port
life of the Thames, with its accumulation of work, which has not
its like upon the whole planet. Everything is colossal. From
Greenwich up to London both sides of the river are a continuous
quay : everywhere there are goods being piled, sacks being raised
on pulleys, ships being laid at anchor ; everywhere are fresh
storehouses for copper, beer, sails, tar, and chemicals. The
river is a mile broad and is like a street populated with ships.
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ENGLAND
197
\Brothtrs photo sc.
Henry Moore: "Mounts Bay."
iBy permission of the CorporcUion 0/ Manchester, the owners of the picture.)
a workshop winding again and again. The steamers and sailing
vessels move up and down stream, or lie in masses, close beside
one another, at anchor. Upon the bank the docks lie athwart
like so many streets of water, sending out ships or taking them
in. The ranks of masts and the slender rigging form a spider's
web spreading across the whole horizon ; and a vaporous haze,
penetrated by the sun, envelops it with a reddish veil.
Every dock is like a town, filled with huge vats and populated
with a swarm of human beings, that moves hither and thither
amid fluttering shadows. This vast panorama, veiled with smoke
and mist, only now and then broken by a ray of sunlight, is the
theme of Wyllie's pictures. Even as a child he ran about in
the port of London, clambered on to the ships, noted the play
of the waves, and wandered about the docks, and so he painted
his pictures afterwards with all the technical knowledge of a
sailor. There is no one who knows so well how ships stand
in the water ; no one has such an understanding of their details :
the heavy sailing-vessels and the great steamers, which lie in
the brown water of the port like mighty monsters, the sailors
and the movements of the dock labourers, the dizzy tide of men,
the confusion of cabs and drays upon the bridges spanning the
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MODERN PAINTING
k /-i:
arm of the Thames; only
VoUon in Paris is to be
compared with him as
painter of a river-port.
Apart from him, Clara
Montalba specially has
painted the Lxjndon port
in delicate water-colours.
Yet she is almost more
at home in Venice, the
Venice of Francesco
Guardi, with its magic
gleam, its canals, regattas,
and palaces, the Oriental
and dazzling splendour of
San Marco, the austere
grace of San Giorgio
Maggiore, the spirited
and fantastic cUcadence of
Santa Maria della Salute.
Elsewhere English water-
colour often enters into a fruitless rivalry with oil-painting, but
Clara Montalba cleaves to the old form which in other days
under Bonington, David Cox, and Turner was the chief glory
of the English school. She throws lightly upon paper notes
and effects which have struck her, and the memory of which
she wishes to retain.
For the English painters of the day, so far as they do not
remain in the country, Venice has become what the East was for
the earlier generations. They no longer study the romantic Venice
which Turner painted and Byron sang in CAilde Harold, they
do not paint the noble beauty of Venetian architecture or its
canals glowing in the sun, but the Venice of the day, with its
narrow alleys and pretty girls, Venice with its marvellous effects
of light and the picturesque figures of its streets. Nor are
they at pains to discover " ideal " traits in the character of the
Italian people. They paint true, everyday scenes from popular
^im-
-1^
Magazme of Art.]
Luke Fildes: "Venetian Women."
{By ptrmisaioH of tht Berlin Photographic Companyt
tht owners of the copyright.)
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ENGLAND
199
life, but these are
glorified by the magic
of light After Zezzos,
Ludwig Passini, Cecil
van Haanen, Tito, and
Eugene Blaas, the Eng-
lishmen Luke Fildes,
W. Logsdail, and Henry
Woods are the most
skilful painters of
Venetian street scenes.
In the pictures of Luke
Fildes and W. Logsdail
there are usually to be
seen in the foreground
beautiful women, painted
full-size, washing linen
in the canal or seated
knitting at the house
door ; the heads are
bright and animated,
the colours almost
glaringly vivid. Henry
IVoodSy the brother-in-law of Luke Fildes, rather followed the
paths prescribed by Favretto in such pictures as " Venetian
Trade in the Streets," " The Sale of an Old Master," " Pre-
paration for the First Communion," " Back from the Rialto,"
and the like ; of all the English he has carried out the study
of bright daylight most consistently. The little glass house
which he built in 1879 at the back of the Palazzo Vendramin
became the model of all the glass studios now disseminated
over the city of the lagunes.
And these labours in Venice contributed in no unessential
manner to lead English painting, in general, away from its
one-sided aesthetics and rather more into the mud of the streets,
causing it to break with its finely accorded tones, and bringing
it to a more earnest study of light. Beside his idealized
iBfothirs photo sc.
Stanhope Forbes: "The Lighthouse."
(By penmiaaioH oj thg Corporation of Manchester^ the
owners of the picture.^
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200 MODERN PAINTING
Venetian women, Luke Fildes also painted large pictures from
the life of the English people, such as " The Return of the
Lost One," "The Widower," and the like, which struck tones
more earnest than English painting does elsewhere; and in his
picture of 1878, "The Poor of London," he even recalled
certain sketches which Gavarni drew during his rambles
through the poverty-stricken quarter of London. The poor
starving figures in this work were rendered quite realistically
and without embellishment; the general tone was a greenish
grey, making a forcible change from the customary light blue
of English pictures. Dudley Hardy's huge picture " Homeless,"
where a crowd of human beings are sleeping at night in the
open air at the foot of a monument in London, and Jacomb
Hoods plain scenes from London street life, are other works
which in recent years were striking from having a character
rather French than English. Stott of Oldham listens in rapture
to the symphonic harmonies of the great magician Whistler,
and by his pretty pictures of the dunes with children playing,
powerful portraits, and delicate, vaporous moonlight landscapes
he has won many admirers on the Continent also. Stanhope
Forbes painted " A Philharmonic Society in the Country," a
representation of an auction, and scenes from the career of the
Salvation Army, in which he restrained himself from all sub-
ordinate ideas of a poetic turn, and approached the Danes by
the bonhomie of his method of observation. In English art
these are the few painters par exceUencCy the solitary artists who
aim more in the French sense at the naturalistic transcript of
a fragment of reality, and combine with it a more direct study
of light than is elsewhere usual in the English school.
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CHAPTER XXXVIII
BELGIUM
As David swayed over Belgian fainting from 1800 to 1830, and Delaroche
from 1830 to 1850, Courbet swayed over it from 1850 to 1870. — Charles
de Grouxy Henri de Braekeleer, Constantin Meunier, Charles Verlat,
Louis Dubois, Jan Stobbaerts, Leopold Speekaert, Alfred Stevens^ De
yonghe, Baugniet, the brothers Verhas, Charles Hermans. — The land-
scape-painters first go upon the lines of the Fontainebleau artists
and the Impressionists, — Sketch of the history of Belgian landscape-
painting. — Van Assche, Verstappen, Marneffe^ Lauters, Jacob-Jacobs,
Kinder mans y Fourmois^ Schampheleer, Roekfs, ' Lamoriniere, De
Knyff,—Hippolyte Boulenger and. the Sociite Libre des Beaux- Arts,
— Thiodore Baron^ Jacques Rosseels, Joseph Heymans, CoosemanSt
AsselbergSt Verstraete^ Frans Courtens, — The painters of animals c
Verboeckhovent Alfred Verwee, Parmeniier^ De Greef Leemputten,
LSon Massaux, Marie Collaert, — The painters of the sea : Clays,
A. Bouvier, Leemans, A. Baertsoen, Louis Artan, — The portrait-
Painters : Emile Wauters, Liivin de Winne, Agneesens, Lambrichs,
— General characteristic of Belgian painting.
BELGIAN painting differs from English as a fat Flemish
matron from an ethereal young lady. In England refuge is
taken in grace and poetry, objects are divested of their earthy
heaviness, everything is subtile and mysterious and of a
melancholy tenderness; even the painting of peasants is a
bucolical art, which only breathes the spirit of rustic life without
having any of its rude materiality. Painters wander through
nature like sensitive poets, finding flowers everywhere, and it is
pleasant to breathe the perfume of the charming bouquets into
which they have the secret of binding them with so much skill.
But the Belgians are true Flemish masters, exceedingly material,
not in the least refined, and sacrificing nothing to grace. They
go their way like animals at the plough, without growing weary,
VOL, III. ^^ 14
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202 MODERN PAINTING
but without any traces of poetry; they are exclusively in-
terested in reality — in poor folks and in rich and prosperous
interiors, in scenes from peasant life and from the streets, in
fat, heavy women, land and sea, in everything that has life,
colour, and character. A somewhat material weight and a
prosaic sincerity, an unctuous Flemish health, is expressed in
everything. It is as if Jacob Jordaens were again upon his
walks in Flanders.
This revolution of Belgian painting dates from 1850. As
David was at the head of Belgian painting from 1800, and
Delaroche from 1830, Courbet swayed over it from 1850 to 1870.
The historical picture, along with everything mythological and
religious, allegorical and fantastic, was forsaken. The rosy
insipidity, the conventional, blooming pallet-tone of Wappers
and Gallait made way for a ruthless truth of colouring.
Courbet, who himself descended from Jacob Jordaens, helped
the Belgians to become conscious of their old Flemish stock
once more. When his " Stonebreakers ** was exhibited in
Brussels in 1852, it was at first greeted with the same cry of
indignation by which it had been received in France. But this
howl of indignation did not hinder Courbet's realism from
triumphing a few years afterwards with De Groux, who reflected
it in a species of brutal sentimentalism.
Charles de Groux is a remarkable artist. Hendrik Leys
had already painted poverty. Yet he did not see it in the
reality, but only in old pictures. The wealthy and refined
painter had a long way to go from his own princely mansion
to the narrow alleys of old Antwerp where these modern
dramas were played Charles de Groux himself passed an
indigent life in an out-of-the-way quarter, always surrounded by
the pallid and famished faces of the poor. A deep compas-
sion led him to the world of the miserable and heavy-laden.
He transferred to them the melancholy from which he suffered
himself, lived their life with them, and his heart bled when he
saw them suffer. Artist and man were identical with each other
in him. He became the painter of the unfortunate because he
was himself a poor, unfortunate, and hard-featured man ; it was
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BELGIUM 203
ihrough the same necessity of nature by which handsome and
fortunate artists have been the poets of laughter and grace in
every age. He mingles with his painting neither sarcasm nor
complaints, but simply paints the reality as he feels it, with his
whole heart, though without dogmatizing or preaching as a
social democrat. The strife between labour and capital does not
affect him ; he does not trouble himself about the relation
between workmen and employers ; he never utters the war-cry
of the popular tribune, like Eugene de Block. In a real and
earnest spirit he introduced the democracy into art, and gave it
that baptismal certificate which it received in France through
Courbet In other respects he does not resemble the French-
man. Courbet was a robust painter with a broad bravura, an
artist who harmonized everything in the brown tones of the
[Bolognese. De Groux seems meagre and tortured beside him ;
sfhrill tones break through the sooty harmony of his pictures.
Courbet regarded humanity with a broad and healthy Rabe-
laisian laugh, whereas poor De Groux, who suffered himself and
was weak and sickly, has always introduced into his dramas the
profound sentiment of death. In Courbet there are healthy
human beings standing out in all their rusticity, while in De
Groux there are spare figures with hollow cheeks and weak
lungs, consumptive beings who in their very birth have already
fallen the victims of mortality. This preference for disease,
unsightliness, and human decay gives a terrible uniformity to
the works of De Groux. His pictures are disconsolate and
cheerless. The leaden gloom of rainy weather, the melancholy
of low houses with their roofs buried under dirty snow,
and the heavy atmosphere of sad autumnal days are what
he most loves. In his pictures one does not see the
spring, nor song-birds, nor sportive butterflies; scarcely does
a strip of green enliven the sooty uniformity of his colour-
ing, which is as gloomy - as the life of the poor. Mournful
reality sways over everything in his work. It is like a
hospital filled with sick people, pre-ordained in their cradles
to a famished and shivering existence. As mercilessly as a
surgeon operating upon a diseased limb has De Groux drawn
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MODERN PAIIfTING
De Groux: "The Deathbed."
his art from the hospital, and it is often brutal where he
touches the deepest sores of modern civilization. His ideal
never goes beyond the threshold of cellars and attics. There
are in his pictures nothing but poor, broken furniture, stitched
rags, and pale faces, where famine and toil have early left their
traces. He paints the sorrows and the wretchedness of the
artisan, the utter degeneration of men in need of light and air,
with a terrible sincerity known to none before him. Even
Tassaert, the Biranger of the garret, only depicted little grisettes
destroying themselves by the fumes of charcoal with a pallid
smile upon their lips. He never displayed the barren nudity of
the attic where old men die of starvation beneath their filthy
bedclothes. A thoroughly French grace softened the mournful-
ness of his works. De Groux went to the bitter end ; he
painted I'assommqir before it was made a subject for fiction :
the drunkard reeling heavily to his house, ruined men lingering
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BELGIUM
ioi
Dk Groux: "GraOc before Meat."
over the brandy-glass in grimy taverns, and, as a [lugubrious
reverse to the picture, shivering children crouching Gold and
hungry in a fireless room, pale women who hslve cried their
eyes out sewing in the dingy light penetrating through dirty
windows, and broken old cradlefi where little children are lying
dead. Even where he touches a softer note he recognizes only
the regularity of toil or the bitter distress of life : poor women
darning upon a gloomy afternoon the torn clothes of their
husbands or their children, beggars who stand shivering at the
street corner, the half- frozen poor passing with a faint heart by
the brasier of a man Celling coffee, vagabonds drawing a
brandy-flask from their pockets at the street corner, little
children slinking pale and bare-footed over the rough stones,
mothers praying for a dying baby. De Groux knew what a
close bond unites the outcasts of society with religion, arrd
therefore he sometimes represented — and it is the only variation
in his work — the priest at the altar amid the smoke bf the
-candles. Or upon the high-road bearing the last consolatiofi to
the dying. He painted the poor as if he had lived amongst them
himself, and shared their want, their renunciation, and their
' superstition ; and the jiriest and religious worship he pkinted
like a man 6f the humble class who himself believed in them.
Charies de Groux Ief\ hd school behind him'; but the
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2oe MODERN PAINTING
principle of his art survived. A heightened feeling for reality
came into the Belgian school with him, and determined its
further development. Painters looked no longer backwards but
around them, as did their great predecessors in the seventeenth
century. And by painting the men who lived about them, as
these older masters had done, they revelled once more in the
warm juicy colour which was characteristic of Flemish painting
in the days of Jordaens.
Henri de Braekeleer^ nephew of Leys and son of Ferdinand
de Braekeleer, whose genre pictures had such a great reputation
sixty years agOj became the Belgian Pieter de Hoogh of the
nineteenth century. To some extent he closed the tradition of
Leys, and clothed his efforts, with a rational and definite
formula. Leys, who did not stand independent of the old
masters, painted the people of Antwerp who lived in their
time ; Henri de Braekeleer painted those whom he saw himself.
Like all towns which have a past, Antwerp falls into two
sharply divided districts. One of these is formed by the new
town, with its straight and broad streets and stone mansions,
through the high windows of which a clear grey light falls upon
fine and comfortable apartments ; the other is formed by the
old quarter of the town, with its dingy little houses, its pic-
turesque courts, its tortuous alleys illuminated only by a scanty
strip of grey sky, and its old Flemish population, who live now
exactly as their forefathers two hundred years ago. A painter,
brought up in the school of Leys, and, like him, paying honour
to the old Dutch colourists, would necessarily feel himself
drawn towards these old nooks, with beams of light stealing into
sequestered chambers through little windows and playing upon
brightly polished pewter and copper vessels. Here it was still
possible to revel in the Dutch clare-obscure, and that was what
De Braekeleer did. He did not paint the noisy life of the
streets of Antwerp, the heavy tread of the horses dragging
wains laden high over the rough pavement, nor the smoke and
steam of flues and manufactories. But he painted the quiet
and loneliness of a sleeping town, the red roofs of little houses
bathed dreamily in the dull light of the sky, little courts where
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BELGIUM 207
old people sat and sunned themselves upon a bench. He
painted men who were vegetating — men whose life flowed by
with a somnolent monotony, or men in the regular business
of their calling : cordwainers, tailors, and shoemakers, old men
reading or geographers bending over their maps, meagre gardens
with sooty flowers and dim interiors with little leaded windows.
He is himself described as a quiet, dreamy man, and he felt
himself as much at home amid these quiet people and quiet
houses as Groux did amongst the poor. In the matter of
technique he soon deserted the old German lines of Leys,
approaching all the nearer to Van der Meer of Delft and Pieter
de Hoogh. De Hoogh gave him the warm red general tone ;
in that painter he saw the sunbeams glancing sportively over
table-covers, boards, chests, and copper vessels, the light which
from a brighter opening at the side penetrates a dark ante-
chamber like a golden column of dust. From De Hoogh he
learnt to seize boldly many charming problems of light, solving
them with the refinement of an old Dutch master. Claus Meyer
is, more or less, his parallel in Germany.
After Charles de Groux had painted the poor and Henri de
Braekeleer the people of Antwerp, Constantin Meunier went into
the forges and represented great virile bodies, naked to the
waist, in heroic attitudes. Meunier lives in the little town of
Louvain, the capital of the Belgian colliery district. From his
studio he looks over a wide, black country, like a huge, solitary
block of coal — a terrible battle-field for industry. All the air is
darkened with smoke ; the plain is covered with chimneys, high
as obelisks, and long rows of lofty buildings of red, monotonous
brick stand there like busy beehives. Glowing blast furnaces
flare through the fog — those iron-foundries where the machines
of the kingdom are formed, rollers and fly-wheels, the pillars of
bridges and the axles of steam-engines. Workmen — a species
of peaceable giants — bestir themselves at the iron hammer with
red glowing shafts. Meunier himself joined in this battle at the
side of the artisan. At first a sculptor, he applied the gloomy
naturalism of Zola's Germinal to plastic art. As a painter he
is convincing and austere, a little brutal indeed, but sincere and
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MODERN PAINTING
Meunier: "The Peasants* Rebellion."
simple. His landscapes reek of coal and iron, and his pit-men
are terrible, sooty figures, bearing the stamp of great truth-
fulness, whether they stare into the fire of the blast furnace
with a dull gaze, or rest brooding gloomily, tired out with their
work. At times, too, he exhibits scenes of martyrdom which
are Belgian counterparts to those painted in France by Ribot
under the influence of the Spanish naturalists. In place of the
boudoir saints of the earlier generation one sees nude figures
which have been marvellously painted, half-mouldered corpses
with sanguinary wounds. A smack of the butcher's shop was
introduced into Flemish art by Meunier's pictures.
On account of this attempt to place religious painting upon
a realistic basis, Charles Verlat ought not to be passed over.
During a residence in Palestine he had prepared numerous
figure and landscape studies, which he put together in religious
pictures after his return. The result was a trivial though
massive realism, as it is in most of the biblical Eastern painters,
but in Verlat it has the more crude effect as he had no eye
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BELGIUM 209
for landscape whatever. Everything is petrified, the persons, the
air, and the light He did nothing for the progress of religious
painting, but his primitive realism was so far stimulating that
it enabled him to put an end to conventional sacred painting
in Belgium ; and by a fresher study of nature he attached
himself to the general movement. By his Eastern pictures, as
well as his landscapes and animals, many a younger artist had
his eyes opened for the life of nature.
Louis Dubois is, perhaps, the most exuberant in power of
all this group influenced by Courbet His first broad and
juicily painted likenesses recall old Pourbus. Later he turned,
with the large bravura and oily red-brown method of painting
characteristic of Courbet, to the figure-picture, still-life, and
landscape. When he painted nude women they were exuberant
in health and strength. He delighted in fat shoulders and
sinewy necks, the gleam of the skin under lamplight, the
coats of roes and hares, the iridescent glitter of carp and cod ;
in fact he was a robust workman like Gustave Courbet, and
clasped matter in all its unctuous and luxuriant health with
a voluptuous satisfaction.
Equally full-blooded, Jan Stobbaerts painted artisan pictures,
landscapes, and still-life in dark-brown studio tones, and with
brutal force. He peculiarly sought out subjects of a repellent
triviality : cowhouses in warm yellow-greenish light alternate
with dark and dirty interiors, kitchens where decaying vege-
tables are strewn about with barbers' rooms where old men are
being shaved Jan Stobbaerts, in fact, is an unwieldy Flemish
bear, robust, of a healthy human understanding and colossal
hideousness.
At the time when he began to paint in Antwerp, an artist
made his appearance in Brussels who was not quite so exuberant
in power, but also had a virile and energetic talent — Leopola
Speekaert. His first picture, in i860, was a nymph taken by
surprise, a healthy piece of naked flesh, painted with that broad
and robust technique by which Courbet's nude women impressed
the Belgians. After that he also turned to the painting of the
poor, depicting beggars, drunkards, women of the people — pictures
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210 MODERN PAINTING
from which later generations will receive a terrifying repre-
sentation of Brussels in the sixties.
Alfred Stevens^ who also began with beggarwomen and
vagabonds, introduced a certain nervous restlessness — even if it
was not profound— into Flemish healthiness. Women, seas and
flowers, silk and satin, everything rich in nuances and rendering
delicate reflections possible, busied his dexterous brush. His
pictures are at once refined and solid, graceful and strong,
healthy and yet full of nervous vibration, Flemish and Parisian-
It almost seems, indeed, as though they were too Flemish to
count as true representations of the Parisienne, Stevens is now
nearly sixty-eight years of age, and looks like the retired colonel
of a cavalry regiment Even the rude blows of fate have failed
to bow his broad-shouldered and gigantic frame with its massive
back and great muscular hands. And these muscular hands
have given something of their own strength to the tender lines
of Parisiennes, and made such beings healthier and more full-
blooded than they really are. The heaviness of Jordaens lies
in his blood. Like all these Flemish artists, he is a painter of
still-life. His pretty women, who are bathing or regarding
bouquets, Japanese masques and statuettes, in an attitude which
permits the spectator to study their rich toilettes and their
tasteful household surroundings, seem themselves like puppets
set amid these knickknacks. The capacity for grasping the
atmosphere of life in its quivering movement, the poetry of
what is psychical, evaporated from this art.
The successes of Stevens led De Jonghe, Baugniet, and the
brothers Verhas into the same course. Beneath the hands of
De Jonghe the Parisienne becomes a tender, languishing being,
stretching at full length upon a soft velvet sofa. He, too, knows
nothing of passion and spiritual life. All the interest lies in the
coquetry of the toilette, which, however, is always confined within
the limits of conventional decency. All De Jonghe*s women
look as innocent as if they had just left a boarding-school.
They sit over their work-basket or have a novel resting upon
their knees. A slight fit of sulks or an impatient expectancy
is the only thing that, now and then, disturbs the sunny clearness
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BELGIUM
211
^K /^Ki ^HflBiHlJUjliA:n!ni _
1
BnrS fe^Hi^?^^^^Hiv^
fSH^Sb. <
?!^v:k .;;.,:.,:. , , mu^-^'^>w^\
1 ,. ..-v.
ii«^si!p^*V^X
Verhas: "The Schoolgirls' Review."
of their foreheads. Baugniet and the brothers Jan and Frans
Verhas opened the gate upon the world of childhood in painting
their women, and thus the part played by women became
different The modern Eve of Stevens and the beautiful, in-
different being of De Jonghe were transformed into quiet and
happy mothers, blissfully watching the little one playing upon
their lap. Frans and Jan Verhas have painted a whole series of
such family scenes, in which the fresh ring of children's voices
may be heard. They are the first Belgians who have seized
the grace of well-bred children with a fine comprehension. A
mixture of English graciousness and Parisian refinement under-
lies their pictures.
Charles Hermans brought art into the streets. His great
picture of 1875, " In the Dawn," was certainly by no means a
delicate work, and it has an old-fashioned look in the Mus6e
Moderne of Brussels. A profligate is reeling from a fashionable
restaurant with his hat set far back on his head and a smart-
looking girl upon each arm, whilst workpeople, who are just
setting forth to their day's toil, are passing down the street.
There was a trace of Hogarth in this forced opposition between
vice and virtue, pleasure and duty, luxury and poverty. There
was a far-fetched, vulgar antithesis, suggesjtive of genre, in this
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212 • MODERN PAINTING
division of the picture into two groups : on the one side creatures
of pleasure, a frou-frou of silken clothes and a loud tipsy cry ;
upon the other artisans, earnest and melancholy, with the
tesigned mien of martyrs. And for the painter himself the
above work was the only 4«cky hit. Even his ''Conscripts" of
1878 and the "Masked Ball'' of 1880 did not achieve anything
like the same success, and later he only painted smaller pictures
of women in the style of Alfred Stevens, which are not far
removed from what is now produced in Paris of the same
description. Nevertheless Hermans' "In the Dawn" gives a
date in the history of Belgian painting. It was in Belgium the
first modem picture with life-size figures, the first representing
a street scene upon the scale of an historical picture, and it
communicated to the Belgians the principles of Manet's view
of colour.
All those elder painters who gathered round Dubois and
Braekeleer were rich, oily, and Flemish, or else quiet, phlegmatic,
and Dutch. They all loved sauce, the dark-brown backgrounds,
the brown flesh-tint and red shadows. In the history of
Belgian painting they occupy a position similar to that of
Courbet and Ribot in French. When Hermans exhibited his
picture in the middle of the seventies, Belgian art issued from
this Courbet phase, and, like the French, sacrificed warm, bitu-
minous tones to a painting which set the exact study of tone
values in the first place. And here also the revolution was
begun by the landscape-painters. By their unbroken intercourse
with nature they first remarked how little this unctuous fashion
of painting after the manner of Courbet was really adapted for
grasping the bloom and tenderness of the physical world.
The gradual development of this landscape-painting, in which
Belgian art so far shows its chief power, dates from 1830. At
that time Ruysdael had been first discovered. Artists were in
a melancholy frame of mind, and produced a mass of waterfalls
and rocks, and Alpine views and cascades, the elegiac moiim-
fulness of which belonged to the past as much as did their bad
colouring. Van Assche, Verstappen^ arid Mameffe had a pre-
ference for the "sublime" — that is to say, for the exact opposite
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' BELGIUM \v 213
of the simple districts which they saw arpund them. Frequent
journeys to Italy had created in them a sickly enthusiasm for
lai^e, imposing lines. It wa§ only after the forties that painters
made a gradual return to Belgium, and no longer toiled to seek
at a distance after materials for the preparation of artificially
composed stage-scenes. Landscape then became as accurate a
rendering as was possible of the woods and waters of their
native land, though it needed yet another generation to reach
the simplicity and refinement of modern feeling for nature. The
panoramic prospects froni the Ardennes of De Jonghcy the ruins
of LauterSy and the lakes and fjords of Jacob-Jacobs are a
parallel to that arid painting of views from mountain districts
which was carried on in Germany by Kameke, old Count
Kalkreuth, and others.
Kindermans, who made his first appearance in the Salon
of 1854, indicated an advance beyond this prosaic or falsely
tempered sobriety. He painted wide green meadows with an
elevated horizon, isolated groups of trees, windmills, and the
little huts of peasants. As yet he did not love nature in all
her revelations, but only when the season was beautiful and
gave an opportunity for artistic compositions. Nevertheless he
forgot the town and the studio, lived amid the Walloon hills,
heard the leaves rustle and the wind sigh, and was filled with
the consciousness of nature. A moist air began to blow through
landscapes, and announced, although diffidently, the progress
which was made by the next generation.
FourmoiSy who laboured at the same time, painted, like
Hobbema, large and fine groups of trees, behind which a
windmill or a peasant's cottage may be seen emerging, and little
footpaths leading to the skirts of a forest. He stood upon the
shoulders of the old Dutchman, had no delicate eye for the
subtilties of atmosphere, never yielded to dreaminess, and yet he
was a good worker and a forcible painter.
For his representations of Belgian flat landscape Edmond de
SchampheUer became well known. Having lived a long time in
Munich during the fifties, he enjoyed a special fame in Germany
also. From 1856 the chief elements of his pictures, which have
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214 MODERN PAINTING
been felt in a fresh and healthy if also in an uninteresting
manner, are meadows covered with luxuriant grass or fields
ovei^own with waving grain, straight canals, where the water
is smooth and quiet like a mirror, or still streams bounded by
low banks and ruffled by the wind that brings the rain; alleys
of willow, isolated strips of wood, windmills, church spires, or the
chimneys of manufactories here and there rise above these plains,
the broad pastures are animated by majestic cattle grazing
over them, and a dull sky, covered by grey rain-clouds, rests
over alL RoelofSy a Dutchman living in Brussels, made an
attentive study of the play of light upon the lush Flemidi
meadows. Lamoriniere made an appearance with his tall tree-
stems, carefully and smoothly painted. He had a pious venera-
tion for nature, and believed that he could compass her most
readily by a petty stippling, through which he painted every
strip of bark with exactness — a process which certainly would
not fail in its effect, if the forest really made the impression
that it was the first and most necessary duty of the beholder
to verify the number of trees which it possessed at the given
moment, counting one there, and there another, and there a
third. Artists were still diffident and timid in the presence of
mighty nature ; painting had a leaning towards what was petty,
pretty, and pleasing, a strained poetry made up of artificially
harmonized tones. Alfred de Knyff, trained in the school of
Rousseau, Dupr6, Paul Huet, and Cabat, seems to have first
brought the genuine programme of the masters of Fontainebleau
into Belgium, and the Belgian critics shook their heads over
him in disapprobation because he painted " green," as the French
critics had done over Rousseau. In the succeeding years, however,
the conscientious landscape of the studio gave way, more and
more, to the fresh picture from nature. The miracles of light and
atmosphere became in Belgium likewise the object of principal
study to the landscape-painters.
In the history of art Hippolyte Boulenger is to be honoured as
the Belgian Corot He also had served in the ranks, and been
a painter of household decoration before he devoted himself to
landscape. He lived in those days in an attic immediately
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BELGIUM 215
below the roof; every morning when he rose, and every evening
when he returned home, he looked straight into the sky. He
noted with curiosity the earliest rays of the sun which streamed
into his room, and observed the last quivering of the evening
light. In this way there were born in him thoughts and emotions
to which he felt the need of giving pictorial expression. Being
too poor, he was unable to go to the Academy, and was forced
to content himself with selling, when he could, one of the copies
of the old masters which he made in the Brussels Museum.
But one Sunday morning the sunbeams glanced in his attic in
a manner which was too enticing. He seized his canvas and his
brush and went into the town, took the old coach-road fringed
with great limes, and passed by the meadows, cultivated fields,
and woodlands until he came to the field of Waterloo. In an
old village inn behind the Bois de la Cambre he took lodgings,
and from that moment he found his true calling. He began
to study light, different as it is at every hour of the day, and
shedding different nuances of colour upon the green of the leaves,
the grey of the earth, and the blue of the sky — apparently
capricious in its workings, yet obedient to a logical regularity
of action. He sought to fathom the mystery of the eternal
changes of light, to trace, as it were, the hourly course of the
sunbeams. Millet, the mighty herald of the great Pan, was at
that time his ideal. He, too, wished to paint man and the soil,
and to devote himself, like Millet, to the worship of old Cybele.
So he soon left the Bois de la Cambre, which was already
becoming something too much of a park, and beginning to
resemble the Bois de Boulogne ; first he went to Ruysbroeck,
the Dachau of Brussels, and then to Anderghem, on the road
to Tervueren. Tervueren was his last halting-place, and through
him it has become the cradle of Belgian landscape-painting. All
the day long he roamed about in the wood, and sat of an evening
with the peasants in the smoky tavern.
The Brussels Salon of 1863 contained his first picture, that
of 1866 was the birthplace of his celebrity, and from 1866 to
1873 one masterpiece followed the other. Tervueren became
his Barbizon. Here he busied himself, and was never weary
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2i6 MODERN PAINTING
of painting the silence of the wood, the clear light resting upon
the rich meadows of Brabant, and the fine rain falling upon the
thirsty cornfields. No one before him had shown so much
power in painting the monotony of the heath, with the dull
grey wintry clouds lowering above it ; no one had hearkened
with. more attention to the wind moaning its complaint amid
the melancholy thickets of the forest. These pictures directly
recall Millet with their broad surfaces and the great and boldly
simplified outline of the Flemish peasant standing out so gravely
against the evening sky. But after no long time Boulenger's
manner underwent a transformation, and when "The View of
Basti^re" appeared in the Brussels Salon of 1870, this Millet
reeking of the earth had acquired the sentiment of Elysium
like a Corot. A rainbow softly spans the sky ; a thin, drizzling
rain comes dripping down, changed into fluid gold by the rays
of the sun. Rosy as mystical flowers stand the clouds in the
sky, and below they are reflected in the azure of the ocean.
What was at first heavy, hard, and material became more and
more delicate and refined. A golden bloom lies glittering in
the latest pictures of Boulenger. Now he sought only the most
judicious harmonies, only a veiled clarity of tones. He fluttered
more boldly around the light, as if with a presentiment that he
would soon see it no more. And he was but seven-and-thirty
when he died in Brussels in the July of 1874. His death was
the greatest blow to Belgian painting. But, short as his life was,
he left behind him traces not to be forgotten. Not " the school
of Tervueren " alone, that forcible Ecole en pletn vent, but all the
newest art in Belgium may be traced to him who was so suddenly
smitten by death. The Flemish heaviness, the intelligent
practice of the studio, made way for a delicate system of ob-
servation, calculated to meet particular cases, a system which
endeavoured to note with fine exactness the impressions made
by the season and the hour.
At the. suggestion of Boulenger, a circle of artists was
formed in 1868, the Socidt^ Libre des Beaux-Arts, which gradually
came to include all the young Belgians of talent. The most
notable French and Dutch artists— Corot, Millet, Daumier,
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BELGIUM 217
Courbet, Daubigny, Alfred Stevens, Bonvin, Willem Maris, and
others — accepted honorary membership. In 1870 the first exhi-
bition of the society was arranged; in 1871 was founded the
journal Art Libre, where the young painters themselves defended
their ideas with the pen : they wanted to paint nature as they
saw it, with all possible renunciation of arrangement and forced
system. They wanted to study the relations of tone values, and
to look rather to the rightness than to the brilliancy of colour.
Manet and the Fontainebleau masters had shown the way which
Belgian painting had to follow. And before long the doors of
museums and private galleries were thrown open to admit their
works, as a short time before they had been opened to the
Parisian Indipendants.
Of them all Thiodore Baron had most the stuff in him to
replace Boulenger, who had died so young. He introduced a
grave and sombre note into Belgian landscape. His woodlands
dream beneath a heavy and rainy sky, withered autumn leaves
whirl around, frost and rime cover the ground. The localities
themselves are usually very simple : a strip of heath, a patch of
field, a straight road, a boulder of cliff beneath a sad sky ; no
more than these are needed to create an impression of great
loneliness, an earnest and austere phase of thought For Baron
there was no mild lisping breeze, no fresh budding spring and
brooding summer. Cold winter, the melancholy of gloomy
November days, and the earth in widow's weeds were what
most attracted him. He discovered such moods of nature in the
Ardennes. The heath of Coudroy, the steep banks of the Meuse,
little mountain villages upon parched moorland, he likewise took
delight in painting. But most of all he loved the Walloon soil —
not its wide plains and far horizons, but its deep valleys and
the gnarled lines of isolated trees, rising ghostlike from a lonely
heath. As Boulenger might be compared with Corot, Baron
might be compared with Rousseau. His method is broad, solid,
robust, and sound. He has none of the fragrant . grace of
Boulenger; he does not seek after tender moods of light, but,
like Rousseau, loves cold day, builds up his landscape in a
geological fashion, and would give a sense of the structure and
VOL. III. 15
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stratification of the earth ; and finally he went aground upon
the same reef on which Rousseau foundered. He went into
pai'ticularities more and more. He wished to render everything
plastically in its full bodily shape, the levels of the earth as
well as the clouds and the leaves. And thus his pictures
received an appearance of something laboured and built up.
In his effort to catch the common tone of day with all possible
fidelity he fell into a hard and cold grey. Like Rousseau,
Baron was, in truth, a spirit ever searching and never contented.
His art is the very opposite to what is facile, spirited, and ready
in improvization. It has something heavy, severe, and tough
a Flemish honesty and a rich odour of the earth.
Jacques Rosseels, who had great influence as a teacher,
worked upon the same principles, although a brighter and paler
light is diffused over the sky of his landscapes. His art is freer
and more cheerful, his colouring softer and more flattering. The
red roofs, green meadows, and rich yellow Flemish cornfields
have a blither note. Great plains, with little villages and
clattering windmills, he had also a joy in painting; and his
works would have a yet more cordial effect had he not, like
his predecessors of the seventeenth century, had such a love for
the great scale of size.
To Boulenger, the Belgian Corot, and Baron, the Belgian
Rousseau, Joseph Heymans must be added as the Belgian Millet,
and his first appearance was likewise made in the year i860.
His field of observation is the whole Flemish land. Besides the
sandy dunes and broad cultivated fields, he painted the forests,
meadows, and slumbering pools, the heath, the long straight
avenues, horizons stretching into boundless space, and tiny
footpaths leading through idyllic woodlands. He loves light
though he also paints dark thunderclouds, dusk shed over the
fields, and night wrapping everything in its mystical veil. And
with him nature is ever the seat of human toil. Like Millet, he
places in his landscapes the rustic moving behind his plough,
weeding, mowing, or striding across the field scattering seed with
a grandeur of movement ; the day-labourer going to his work in
the early morning with a heavy tread ; the shepherd in his blue
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BELGIUM 2T9
•cloak standing motionless beside his grazing flocks. Like Millet,
too, he has a fine feeling for quiet, rhythmical movement. The
ploughman^ the shepherd, the sower, have in his pictures also
something gravely sacerdotal in their large gestures. The silence
of the heath in the heart of the night, with the great figure of
the shepherd leaning on his staff and the white sheep melting
into the darkness, he has rendered entirely in Millet's spirit. It
is only the softness and the aerial . appearance of Millet's pastels
that he has not reached. His solid, pasty handling deprived
objects of lightness. His water has a congealed look, and his
leaves hang motionless upon the boughs. In the presence of
his pictures one receives the notion of a region where no wind
-can ever blow and no bird dwell. His sincere and serious
art was unable to arrest the tremor of life, the heart-beat of
nature.
; Contemporaneously with Boulenger, Coosemans and Asselbergs
settled in the forest of Tervueren, whence they often turned their
-gaze towards Fontainebleau. Jules Goethals^ who appeared some-
what later, in 1866, with his phases of rainy weather, inclines
rather to the minute painting of De la Berge; he regarded
landscape with the eyes of a primitive artist, seeking to render
trees, fields, and blades of grass in all their details.
As in Fontainebleau, animal painting came to flourish hand-
in-hand with landscape, though, until i860, it, too, had stood
vpon a very modest level. The respectable and inexhaustible
Verboeckhoven at that time enjoyed especial celebrity, although
Jiis animals had only a distant resemblance to those of real
iife. They were always in an elegiac frame of mind, and seemed,
in their melancholy, like fallen angels, to have remembrance
of a better and more human condition, and still to preserve,
even as animals, a decent behaviour and cleanliness. His little
lambs were always as pretty as the Lamb of God, and beneath
their broad foreheads his oxen revolved profound philosophical
ideas. Thin little trees and white little clouds he loved like his
predecessor Ommeganck^ and like him, too, he was long the
favourite of all collectors who value mathematical conscientious-
jiess of drawing and sniioothness of execution. His pupils Louis
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I 130 MODERN PAINTING
I
j Robbe and Charles Tschaggeny devoted themselves also to paint-
I ing sheep, and in Belgian painting occupy the place held by
! Brascassat in France. Landscapes were filled up with animals,
or else animal pictures were provided with an arbitral y back-
ground of landscape. But animals and landscapes were never
united in any complete representation of natural life. It was only
after a new kind of study of nature had been rendered possible
by the landscape-painters of the Tervueren school that animal
painters entered on a novel course, Alfred Verwee^ who first
distinguished himself with his "Oxen Grazing" of 1863, stands to
the followers of Ommeganck as Troyon to those of Brascassat.
He is the specialist of rich Flemish meadows, upon which sound
and powerful animals are grazing, and over which there arches
a soft and misty sky. All his pictures are treated with a heavy
and pasty handling, and the air and clouds are usually of a dull
and mournful grey. His works are wanting in lightness and
transparency, but they have an inborn strength. His oxen seem
quite at home in the luxuriant meadows where they sink deep
in the high ripe grass ; and in their dull, brooding ponderousness
they aim at being no more than animals, whether they lie
chewing the cud upon the meadows or clumsily tread the ground
beneath the yoke. Artiongst his pupils Pannentier^ Lambrichs,
De Greef Frans van Leemputten^ and Lion Massaux became
known. Marie Collaert, the Flemish Rosa Bonheur, and from
1866 the muse of Belgian landscape, has a position to herself
with her intimate pictures of country life, works in which a
masculine and powerful handling is united with discreet and
tender feminine sentiment In Verwee there may be found yokes
of oxen at their labour, the odour of fertile earth steaming from
the broken soil, and grey clouds heavily shifting across the
firmament ; in Marie Collaert quiet nooks beneath a clear sky,
green stretches of grass, where the cows are at pasture in idyllic
peace. In the one there is the battle with the soil, and in the
other the cheery freshness of country life.
The painting of the sea began with Paul Jean Clays— \n
external matters, at least — to enter upon the stage of intimate
art He broke with the tradition of depicting great storms (the
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BELGIUM 231
golden age of which coincided with the raptures of the historical
picture), and painted quiet expanses of water, the regular move-
ment of the tide, the normal condition of the sea. Whereas the
earlier generation loved what was exaggerated and tempestuous,.
Clays sought — though in later years he may have done so very
artificially and by routine — to grasp the simple, mysterious poetry
of the peaceful sea, and to render with faithfulness the tones of
the waves, just as the landscape-painters, when they had once
overcome the temptation to rhetorical exaggeration, searched
out still and quiet comers, which receive their " mood " from the .
atmosphere alone. The magical charm of morning, the golden
brilliancy of the evening twilight, the infinite variety of tones
which light produces upon the waves, became the ideal of
sea-painters after Clays.
A. Bouviery over whose pictures there hovers, as a rule, a
monotonous grey, took more delight in the splashing of the waves
and rainy sky than in the glittering and sparkling repose of the
sea. In Leemans there is still a certain echo of Romanticism
and a weak reminiscence of the moonlight nights of Van der
Necr. And in recent exhibitions A. Bctertsoen has attracted
notice by seas of impressive breadth and a grave and sombre
character. Louis Artan, who made his appearance in 1866 with
" Dunes upon the Shores of the North Sea," was probably the
most refined and subtile colourist amongst the Belgian sea-
painters. Like Clays, he scarcely leaves the shore, or, at any
rate, does not forget, when he goes upon the high sea, to render
the faint line of the dunes fringing the far horizon. His colouring
is very delicate: he seeks pale, blended tones, light blue, soft
green, pallid rose-colour. His pictures have something tender
and caressing. Like Boulenger, as a landscape-painter he is
more sensitive to the fleeting tender play of light than is com-
monly the case with Belgian painters. Both had in their veins
a mixture of Flemish and French blood, and it gives their
paintings a peculiar physiognomy, an attractive mingling of
strength and grace, of Flemish heaviness and French ease.
For even now, when Belgian painting has got beyond the
Courbet phase, there is no doubt that a certain earthy
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MagoMint of Art.}
Wauters: "The Madness of Hugo van der Goes."
ponderousness, and an unctuous compactness, the very opposite
of Impressionism, still remain, despite the acceptance of bright
tone. There are in Belgium at present many, indeed very many,
good painters ; and Belgian art is a conscientious and honest
art Wherever it appears it makes a striking effect by its
soundness, its robust strength, and its animal warmth. But its
essential importance lies in a rather external and workmanlike
bravura. To use colour as the expression of a subtile emotion,
to pursue the study of light to its most refined results, is not
the business of the Belgian artists. Their painting is rich and
broad, and they work without effort, but they have few surprises.
Blamelessly good as are their productions, their scenes from
popular life, portraits, landscapes, and still-life, they seldom give
occasion for discussion in reference to their position in the
history of art. .
/. de la HoesCy Meerts^ and Ravet represented the street-
life of Brussels. Josse Iinpens, faithful to old Flemish habits,
entered the workshops of tailors and shoemakers. In Paris Jan
van Beers paints matters which verge on the indecorous. At
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BELGIUM
223
first his pungent and adroitly
painted pictures are seductive
and piquant, and then one sees
their intention and is put out of
humour. Alfred Hubert handles
military scenes and scenes from
society, and Hoeteriks the
picturesque thronging of great
masses of people. Xavier Mel-
lery discovered much that is
pretty in interiors upon the
island of Marken. At first a
pupil of G6r6me and Bouguereau,
Carl NySy in such pictures as
"The Orphans," "The Lady with
the Parasol," " The Lady with
the Monkey," followed the path
prescribed by Alfred Stevens.
In his triptych "A Day from
the Life of Chalk-Sellers," Lhn
Fridiric appeared as a repre-
sentative of the painting of the
poor, which amongst Belgians at
that time frequently assumed the
character of art with a revolu-
tionary purpose. And Felix Ter
Linden was probably the most a pupil of the French, and
rose above the heavy grey painting of the others, as a genuine
Impressionist and refined charmeury by a rapid and animated
treatment, and a touch of improvization and subtilty.
Entile Wauters, also a thoroughly Flemish painter, is to be
highly respected on all points, although it is impossible to feel
enthusiasm for him. He was barely thirty when he received
the medal of honour at the Paris World Exhibition of 1878
for a couple of historical pictures from the life of Mary of
Bui^undy and of Hugo van der Goes. The admirers of
historical painting at that time believed that they could welcome
Mag, ofArt,\ ItarUr te.
Wautkrs : Lieutenant-General
goffinet.
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224 MODERN PAINTING
in him the Messiah of a grand art resuscitated, one who would
continue the old traditions of Wappers and Gallait His works
were, as a matter of fact, good historical pictures, very
judiciously composed, and containing characters developed in a
convincing fashion. Moreover Wauters was entirely free from
the washed-out and hollow exaggeration of the ideal of beauty
favoured by the older school, and he rendered with simplicity
the portraits of living men who seemed to him to have a
resemblance to heroes of the episodes he would represent.
The monk endeavouring to soothe poor Hugo van der Goes
by music is an exceedingly vivid likeness, while the children,
choristers, and singers are painted very naturally and well, and
altogether to the purpose. Even the mad painter is not posing.
Wauters has thoroughly studied the symptoms of madness in
an insane person, and at the same time he has tactfully
observed the distinction between painting and medical analysis.
Even now the picture makes the effect of a forcible work in
the Brussels Museum, and after the lapse of twenty years there
are not many historical works which will bear scrutiny.
His Eastern pictures are equally good and judicious. Having
set out in 1870 to witness the opening of the Suez Canal, he
visited Alexandria, Port Said, Ismailia, and Cairo ; and he
repeated this Egyptian journey in 1880, accompanying the
Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, while in connection with it
he executed various North African scenes, in which he noted
the kaleidoscopic motley ness of Oriental towns, the vibrating
life of the streets of Cairo and Boulac, with the con-
scientiousness of an ethnographical student. One takes him at
his word when he puts upon canvas a strip of African ground
in large dimensions in his panorama " Cairo and the Banks
of the Nile." Nor does one doubt that his portraits, which
in recent years achieved for him his greatest successes, are
uncommonly like their originals : Madame Somz6e in a dark -blue
silk dress, standing in a fashionable room with dark decorations ;
young M. Cosme Somz^e, also dressed in blue, and riding on
his pony through the dunes ; and Lieutenant-General Goffinet,
a portrait which won the gold medal at the Munich Exhibition
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BELGIUM 225
of 1890. Emile Wauters rises above the vigorous group of
Belgian portrait-painters, LUvin de Winner AgneesenSy LambrichSy
De Gonckely Nisen, and others, as the most natural and energetic.
All his likenesses are powerful in characterization, colour, and
exposition ; they have been seen in an unusually impressive
manner, and placed before the spectator in a broad, manly,
and full-blooded style of painting. Wauters knew all that was
to be known, and in his judicious loyalty he is one of the
soundest painters of the present time. Only temperament and
warmth of feeling are not to be sought for in his works. That
is what distinguishes him from Lenbach, for instance, though
in other respects he shares with the latter the oiliness of his
pictures an,d their want of atmosphere. Lenbach allows the eyes
alone to shme from a dark scale of tone artistically imitated
from the old masters, and out of this he elaborates intellectual
character. Wauters places his figures in all their massive
corporeality against a light grey background. In the one there
is a spiritual individuality, a momentary impression of quivering
psychical life ; in the other a robust counterpart of nature,
colour and canvas, phlegmatic constitution, and Flemish heavi-
ness.
Verstraete may probably be reckoned the most refined of
the Belgian landscape-painters who have made an impression
in the exhibitions of recent years. There were to be seen by
him summer-pieces with bright green, luminous, and luxuriant
stretches of grass, girlish figfures dressed in bluish-white, and
gaily blooming fruit-trees touched by the sunbeams. Also he
paints night-pieces : peasant couples, who stand of an evening
by a hedge in the village. The sky sparkles with stars, and
the magic of silent night reposes over this poetic idyll which
has been felt in such a homely way. There is expressed in
his works a creative faculty, joyous and spontaneous, sympathetic
and replete with the freshness of youth. Potato harvests, with
buxom girls, are painted by Claus in a fine and delicate grey
which recalls Emile Barau. And Frans Courtens is specially at
his ease in the autumnal woods, when the leaves fall from the
tree-tops, yellow, red, and grey, and a thin rain drips through
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226
MODERN PAINTING
the open network
of foliage. Or else
he seats himself
before the sombre
and majestic sea in
the evening, when
the moon rises and
touches the waves
with glittering lines
of silver. Both in
the autumn pictures
and in the seascapes
the confusion of
yellow and green
colours is dazzling,
and is only felt to
be a little theatrical
when one thinks
how much more
profoundly Jacob
Maris would have
penetrated into the same scenes. Like the Flemish landscapists
of the seventeenth century, Courtens loves great spaces of
canvas and great gold frames, but he likewise shares with them
the qualities of a bravura painter, somewhat addicted to outward
show. His pictures are more the result of technical refinement
than of intimate emotion. He renders the materiality of forms,
as also the phenomena of light, with astonishing sureness, and
he has a large and strong-handed method of treatment, much
local truth, brilliant colour and great sincerity, but he never
rids himself of a certain prosaic manner of conception, which
is wanting in the deeper kind of intimate sympathy. His
painting is solid, but not suggestive prose, the very opposite of
that lyric painting, so rich in feeling, which was peculiar to the
French painter-poets. And here, too, he proclaims himself a
true son of his country.
Belgian naturalism is like a vigorous body fed upon solid
IHdnJstdngt photo sc,
Courtens: "Golden Laburnum.*'
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BELGIUM 227
nourishment ; but in this physical contentment the capacity
for enthusiasm and tenderness of feeling have been lost in some
d^ree. The pictures look as though they had been painted
throughout, painted in oil, and painted in a peculiarly Belgian
way. The painters rejoice in their fertile tracts of land, their
fat herds, and the healthy smell of the cowhouse, yet about
finer feelings they trouble themselves but little. Everywhere
there predominates a firm and even technique, and but little
peculiar intimacy and freshness. They have not yet come to
paint the fine perfume of things, nor to render the softness of
their tone values ; they have no feeling for the light tremor
of the atmosphere and the tender poetic dallying of light.
Material heaviness and prosaic sobriety are expressed in every-
thing' — the racial characteristics by which Flemish painting, even
in the seventeenth century, so far as it was autochthonous, was
distinguished from the contemporary painting of the Dutch.
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CHAPTER XXXIX
HOLLAND
The difference between Dutch and Belgian Minting, — The previous history
of artistic efforts in Holland, — Koekkoek, Van Schendel, David Bles,
Hermann ten ICate, Pienemann, Charles Rochupen, Weissenbruch,
Bosboonty Schelfhout, Taurel, Wdldorfi, Kuytenbroumer. — Figure-
painters: yosef Israels, Christoffel Bisschopy Gerk Henkes^ Albert
Neuhuys, Adolf Artt, Pieter Oyens, — The landscape-painters:
Jongkind, Jacob and Willem Maris ^ Anton Mauve, H, W, Mesdag,
^Realism and Sensitivism: Klinkenberg^ Gabriel, — The younger
genet'ation, — Neo* Impressionism : Isaac Israels and Breitner, —
Matthew Maris and Mysticism, — W. Bauer and Jan Toorop, — Thorn
Prikker,^** Expressionism : ** Jan Veth and Haver man, Karpen and
Tholen.
IF Belgium is the land of technique, the intimacy of the
modem sentiment for nature has perhaps found the most
delicate interpreters in the painters of Holland. What is
external predominates in the one country— oils and brush; in
the other heart and hand are united, sentiment and technique.
The ancestor of modern Belgian painting is Courbet; the birth
of modern Dutch painting is contemporaneous with that|great
historical moment when the French landscape-painters took up
their abode in the forest of Fontainebleau, after they [had
acquired an understanding for the old Dutch masters in the
Louvre. What had been a revolution in other countries was
here no more than a process of evolution. For the influence
of the French upon the Dutch merely consisted in giving them
once more the comprehension for the beautiful works of their
own compatriots in the past. A succession of great and
delicate spirits merely took again the old, unbroken tradition,
and continued it in the present without effort.
aa8
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HOLLAND 229
Until the middle of the century the Dutch had made but
little profit out of this heritage. The spirit had fled, even that
of Dow and Mieris, and only the phlegm remained. As a
matter of fact the Dutch painters of the eighteenth century
sought to outbid the minute little painting of Netscher by
paltry imitation, and had as a motto inscribed upon their
banner purity of line as it is understood by the bourgeoisie
and technique as it is understood by the drawing-master. In
the beginning of the nineteenth century, so far as anything
was produced at all, they had fallen into heavy and laboured
imitation of French Classicism, and in addition to this they
were slightly touched with a trace of Romanticism, which
entered into a really comical misalliance with the Dutch phlegm.
And the representatives of the Dutch school of 1830, arid,
inartistic, and tinged with false idealism, turned out in land-
scape nothing but scenical pieces, void of atmosphere, and in
the figure-picture historical or burlesque anecdotes, romantic
melodramas, or peasant pieces from the comic opera — cold,
inanimate, and conventional paintings, such as all Europe pro-
duced at that time.
The next generation endeavoured with great labour to raise
itself somewhat, being specially incited by contact with the
Belgians. Yet even these good intentions and most praise-
worthy efforts were crowned with but little success. Certain
landscapes and intimate studies from life show that the spirit
which had lived in the great men of the seventeenth century
was not entirely extinct, although it had become exceedingly
debilitated. Koekkoek and Van Schendel painted their land-
scapes, which are exceedingly judicious in manner and in a
petty way correct David Bles remembered Teniers, and
mingled with the technique of that master something of the
genre humour of Wilkie. " An Audience easily Pleased,"
" Family Friends," and the like, are the characteristic titles of
his pictures. But if Bles was the Madou of Holland, Hermann
ten Kate aimed at being the Dutch Meissonier. He was one
of those who cannot imagine painting without theatrical
costumes, broad-brimmed grey felt hats, large collars, and
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230 MODERN PAINTING
graceful cloaks. The historical painter Plenemann painted in
the style of Gros, and some of his portraits are not without
merit »
The only man of superior merit whom the '* historical school " :
has produced in Holland is Charles Rochupen, To take him as:
a painter is to take him from his weakest side, for his colour;
scheme is "conventional** — a convention of his own, no doubt;;
but in any case absolutely without regard to truth and nature,,
or even to the requirements of his subject. But his drawing has
a charm and character of its own ; his groupings are lively and*
fanciful, his use of old costume shows a regard for picturesqueness,
and his touch is both easy and aristocratic. He is the chosen*
illustrator of the Dutch historical novel, and at a time when'
book-illustration was at its lowest in Holland and everywhere,
Charles Rochupen knew how to render a scene in black-and-
white with impressiveness and artistic decency. Vulgarity had
never a greater enemy than he. This same quality of innate'
aristocracy characterizes the work of Johannes Bosboom, the
painter of architecture. Under. th^ gfuidance of Rembrandt and
Pieter de Hoogh, he rendered very delicately in oils and water-'
colours the play of sunbeams in the interior of picturesque
churches, and warm effects of light in large halls and dusky
corners. As a rule the light streams in broken yellow tones
over the masonry from a great window in the background^ and
rests broadly upon the walling of the vault ; the dark mass of
the great Renaissance screen is thrown out sharply, while
choristers move with candles in the depths of the nave.
Bosboom, like /. W. Weissenbruch, was one of the painters
of the old school who not only helped to prepare the ground
to be maintained by a new generation, but who allowed them-
selves to be influenced by the new conception of art. Whilst
Schelfhouty Taurel, WcUdarp, and Kuytenbrouwer, though Knights
of the Dutch Order of the Lion and of the Oaken Crown, only
lived to be forgotten for all their painstaking work, both-
Bosboom and Weissenbruch have won fame in the later period,
when they had taught themselves to express a great deal with
very little means. There are drawings and water-colours by
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HOLLAND
231
yittAmboa photo.]
BosBOOM : " A Church Interior.'*
Bosboom which, with a few lines and just a bit of colour, open
up wide visions to the imagination.
And thus, when the younger artists came upon the scene,
they were not obliged to drive back any hostile and opposing
tendencies. The battle which had to be fought elsewhere
before truth and sincerity could be placed upon the throne
usurped by theatrical rhetoric was certainly spared to Israels
and his comrades. It was merely a question of sowing with
greater energy and vigour than these older artists the ground
which had lain fallow since the seventeenth century. The
argument was put, more or less, in the following way : " Our
ancestors had an . enthusiasm for their own country and their
own period. If we have not their genius, let us, at any rate,
attempt to pursue their path. Instead of seeking inspiration
in their times and their country ' let us seek it in our own.
As regards the country there is no difficulty, for we are their
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232 MODERN PAINTING
compatriots, and apart from a few hectares won from the
ocean Holland has little altered in appearance during the last
two hundred years. It is only in the matter of period that
every idea of outward imitation must be given up. Let us,
then, imitate our great masters with no intention of doing over
again what they did in their own time, but with the aim of
doing what they would have done had they lived in our
century."
After the end of the fifties the influence of French exhibitions
confirmed the Dutch in these efforts. Through the pictures of
Millet and Daubigny the young Dutch artists learnt that they had
no need of bringing historical pictures into the world, but that
it was their business to win the secrets of the seashore, the
strand, the dunes, and the canals of the old towns, if they would
become modem painters. And admitting they had made a great
mistake in imitating from the old masters antiquated dress and
the manners of bygone times, their task was now to follow them
in what was essential. For the old pictures had shown the men
of their day neither far-fetched nor long-forgotten curiosities,
but appealed to them simply and cordially as Millet's paintings
had done to his own countrymen. It was quite peacefully
therefore, and without any battle, that modem art came into life
in Holland In fact it seemed as if Pieter de Hoogh, Van Goyen,
and Ruysdael had merely awaited the time when they would be
understood once more to set themselves before the easel. This
direct derivation from classic masters gives a classic stamp to
the modem artists of Holland.
As soon as the Dutch are seen in any exhibition, its rooms
are impregnated with a sense of peaceful clarity and of a quiet
sureness of effect recalling the old masters. The spectator is
conscious of the soft, even, and continuous warmth of the great
faience stoves which stand in prosperous Dutch houses. There
is no noise, no unrest, no struggling. Softer than ever, yielding
and almost melancholy, though not so universally comprehensive
as the old art which compassed the whole life of reality and
dreamland, from the magnificent conceptions of Rembrandt to
the most burlesque scenes of Ostade, the new art of Holland
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HOLLAND 233
handles the scenes of life and the life of nature with a dignified
simplicity, the charm of profound intimacy and cordial tenderness.
Holland is the most harmonious country in the world, the country
of dim rooms and pleasant inner chambers, wide plains and
melancholy dunes, magnificent forms of cloud and skies subdued
in colour. There is nowhere broad light, nowhere broad shadow,
no crystal clearness and but seldom heavy mist A softly
hovering light of diminished strength envelops everything.
Vaporous grey clouds cover the sky. The air is impregnated
with moisture. Few colours are to be seen, and yet everything
is colour. And to this spot of the earth the Dutch painters are
united by a tender sentiment of home. Their art is marked
by a touching and cordial provincialism, the patriotism of the
church spire. They remain quietly in the country, and confine
themselves to the representation of their birthplace — the stately
ports of its sea-board towns, the beach of its watering-places,
the peaceful dignity of its life, the heaviness of its cattle, and
the rich soil of its fields. The harsh sincerity of the French
naturalists becomes softer and more tender in the hands of the
Dutch ; the audacity of the French " luminists," ever seeking the
light, has become more dusky and sombre under the influence
of the Dutch atmosphere. Drawing from the soil of home its
entire strength, they have made for themselves, in art as in
politics, a peaceful little land where the noises of the day find
no disturbing echo.
The decisive year which led the stream of Dutch painting
back into its old course once more was 1857, the very year
when a new movement in Dutch literature was begun with
Multatuli. In 1855 one Josef Israels was represented at the
World Exhibition in Paris by an historical picture : " The Prince
of Orange for the first time opposing the Execution of the Orders
of the King of Spain." And in the catalogue of the Paris Salon
of 1857 the same name appeared opposite the titles "Children
by the Sea " and an " Evening on the Beach," a couple of simple
pictures representing the neighbourhood of Katwijk. Thus
Israels' life embodies a period in modern art, that which led from
the academical hierarchy, from conventionality, inflexibility of
VOL. III. 16
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234
MODERN PAINTING
Magazine of Art.]
Josef Israels and his Son Isaac.
line, and poverty of colour^
to the intimate, sensitive,
subtile, and entirely per-
sonal emotion which
characterizes the great
works of art belonging to
the end of this century.
Josef Israels, the Dutch
Millet, was born on
January 27th, 1824, in
Groningen, a little com-
mercial town in the north
of Holland. He wanted to be a rabbi, studied Hebrew in his
youth, and buried himself in the Talmud. When he left school
he entered the small banking business of his father, and often
went with a money-bag under his arm to the neighbouring
banking house of Mr. Mesdag, whose son, H. W. Mesdag, the
painter of seascapes, had little idea at the time that ever a
sea-piece of his would hang in the studio of this poor Jewish
lad. But in 1844 Israels went to Amsterdam to the studio
of Jan Kruseman, who was then a fashionable painter. His
parents had sent him to lodge with a pious Jewish family,
who lived in the " Joden-bre^straat," the Ghetto of Amsterdam.
He was enchanted with the narrow little streets where the
inhabitants could shake hands from one window to another,
and with the old market-places where there gathered a swarm
of Oriental-looking men. Like Rembrandt, he roamed about
the out-of-the-way alleys, noted the general dealers, the fish-
wives, the fruit-shops with apples and oranges, the pretty and
picturesque Jewesses, and all this mass of life condensed into
such a little space, without at first contemplating the possi-
bility of drawing the figures which he saw around him. On
the contrary, like a diligent pupil, he followed the academical
instructions of Kruseman, under whose guidance he produced
a series of grand historical pictures and Italian scenes of
peasant life.
A journey to Paris which he undertook in 1845, moved by
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Vinkntbos photo.}
Israels: ''A Son of God's People."
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HOLLAND
237
Gam, eUs Btaux-Arts.']
Israels : " The Toilers of the Sea."
[Deaboutm sc.
the exhibition of certain Gretchen pictures of the Frenchified
Dutchman and elegiac Romanticist Ary Scheffer, did not
in any way cause him to alter his ideas. He betook himself,
as a matter of fact, to the studio of Picot, an old pupil of
David, where in those days over a hundred and fifty young
students were at work, and there the first rules of the French
historical painting were communicated to him. Then he pre-
sented himself for entrance into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts,
showing " Achilles and Patroclus " as his probationary drawing,
and he came to Paul Delaroche just after Millet had left
Delaroche's studio. Pils and Lenepveu are said to have been
the only fellow-students with whom he made much acquaintance,
for he was diffident and awkward in society. And when he
returned home in 1848, the year of the revolution, the result of
his residence in Paris was exactly the same as that of Millet's:
he had starved himself, studied in the Louvre, and seen in the
Salon how "grand painting" was carried on in France. Now
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238
MODERN PAINTING
Magaaine of Art.^
Israels: "Weary."
\M. Haider se.
he took a room in Amsterdam and tried to paint as Delaroche
had taught him. " Aaron discovers in his Tent the Corpses of
his Two Sons," '' Hamlet and his Mother," " William the Silent
and Margaret of Parma," " Prince Maurice of Nassau beside
the Body of his Father" — these were the first works which
he sent to Dutch exhibitions ; knights in moonlight and
Calabrian brigands were the first which he sold — for from fifteen
to twenty guilders— to patrons of art in Amsterdam. Such
names as Pienemann, Kruseman, Scheffer, Picot, and Delaroche
cannot explain what Israels became afterwards for Dutch art.
As with Millet, it was an accident, a severe trial in life, which
decided the future of Israels.
Some time after he had settled in Amsterdam he became
exceedingly ill, and went to Zandvoort, a small fishing village
near Haarlem, for his health. In this spot, hidden amongst
the dunes, he lived solitary and alone, far from the bustle of
exhibitions, artistic influences, and the discussions of the studio.
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Israels: "A Mother's Care.**
[Hanfstangl photo.
He lodged with a ship's carpenter, took part in all the usages
of his house-mates, and began to perceive amid these new
surroundings, as Millet had done in Barbizon, that the events
of the present are capable of being painted, that the sorrows
of the poor are as deep as the tragical fate of ancient heroes,
that everyday life is as poetic as any historical subject, and
that nothing suggests richer moods of feeling than the interior
of a fishing-hut, bathed in tender light and harmonious in
•colour. This residence of several months in a distant little
village led him to discover his calling, and determined his further
career. Incessantly did he make studies of nature, and of full-
toned interiors, simple costumes, and the dunes with their pale
grass and yellow sand. For the first time he was carried away
by the intimate beauty of these simple things steeped in ever-
lasting poetry. Like Millet, he conceived an enthusiasm for
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MODERN PAINTING
Amsttrdam : Schalekamp.]
Israels: "Alone in the World."
the life of peasants, for the rudeness of their outline, for their
large forms which have become typical from going through
ever the same movements and repeating ever the same work.
Zandvoort was a revelation for him. Entirely saturated as he
was with academical traditions, he became here the artist who
represented dramas in the life of seafaring folk, the painter
of peaceful, poetic deathbeds, and dim, familiar interiors, the
painter of lonely meadows in the misty dawn. Here he came
to understand the mysteries of light as it is in Holland, and
here he witnessed the sad dramas of the suffering life and
death of the poor, and lived all those pictures, the full harmonies
of which, never seen before, soon outshone in Dutch exhibitions
the loud, motley exaggeration of the historical pieces of
Kruseman.
At the time when De Groux in Brussels revelled in harsh
representations of misery, Israels appeared in Holland with his
lyrical, sympathetic art, which was entirely free from didactic
intention. Back once more in Amsterdam, he settled in the
Rozengracht, and passed seven years in the city of Rembrandt,
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HOLLAND
241
in close friendship
with Burger-Thor6
and Mouilleron, the
engraver of Rem-
brandt's " Night-
Watch." The first
works which he
painted here, com-
pared with his later
works, have still a
slight touch oi genre
in them, betraying
too openly a design
to set the spectator
smiling or weeping.
** First Love " was
the picture of a girl
at a window with a
young man placing
an engagement ring
upon her finger.
His first celebrated
picture, " By the Mother's Grave," which was bought by the
Amsterdam Academy of Arts and now hangs in the National
Museum, represents a weather-beaten fisherman visiting the
graveyard where his wife reposes after a toilsome life, and
carrying as he goes his youngest child on his arm, whilst he
leads an elder one by the hand.
In 1862 he exhibited in London "The Cradle" and "The
Shipwrecked Man," that great dramatic, and perhaps somewhat
theatrical, picture which made his fjame abroad. The storm has
passed, the waves have subsided, the greyish-black thunderclouds
have vanished, and greenish, pallid sky smiles upon the earth
once more. But upon the waves a shattered boat still rocks.
Men, women, and children have come down to see who the
unfortunate wretch may be, lying dead upon the strand, cast
up by the tide. A couple of fishermen are carrying him off.
Paris : Boussod- halation.]
Israels: "Returning from Work."
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242 MODERN PAINTING
whilst the rest follow upon the strand in a melancholy train.
In this picture there was still something violent and melo
dramatic, nor were the means of pictorial expression as yet so
simple as they became in the later works of the master.
Nevertheless it made a great sensation in London, and The
AthencBum wrote of it as the most moving picture in the
exhibition. English collectors began to valfie Israels and
to buy his pictures. Mr. Forbes alone possesses forty of his
works, amongst them the great painting " Through Darkness
to Light," and that beautiful smaller picture in which may
be found for the first time all the quiet and sad simplicity
of Israels' later works, " The Evening before Parting." There
is a little peasant's chamber, half in shadow, and illuminated
only by dull, meagre light. After a life of struggles and priva-
tions, lit up by few beams of light, the great peace has come
for the poor fisherman who lies upon his deathbed. He suffers
no more, and is no more conscious. His eyes are closed, his lips
motionless, his features rigid. Underlying the whole there is a
profound personal feeling, a great human poetry, and the sombre
tones of the picture correspond to it, for despising all finesses
they are content to be the expression of a mood. In this
picture Israels had found his true self. Appreciated and recog-
nized, he married in 1863 the daughter of an advocate in
Groningen, and settled down, first in Scheveningen and then in
the Hague. And here he became in the course of the last
generation the artist whom the world has delighted to honour.
Here he has painted one masterpiece after the other, with that
indefatigable power of work still peculiar to the veteran of
seventy years and upwards.
Josef Israels lives entirely according to rule. Every morning
at nine he may be seen walking, and by ten o'clock punctually he
is at his easel. In the Koninginnengracht, that quiet, thoroughly
Dutch canal leading to the Park, his house is situated. Little
red-roofed houses are passed, houses standing out with some
piquancy against the misty sky, and the canal is fringed by trees,
which cast a bright reflection on the water. Close by may be
heard the whistle of a steam tram which goes its rounds between
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HOLLAND 243
the Hague and Scheveningen. In Israels* house quietude prevails
without a sound. Noble Gobelins subdue the voice, and thick
carpets the footsteps. Here and there upon the walls, in a finely
outlined black frame, there hangs an etching by Rembrandt.
Everything has an air of intimacy, and is kept in delicate and quiet
tones; the very thoughts of a man cannot fail to grow subtile
in the fine silence of this home made for an artist. Behind the
dwelling there lies a garden with a large glass house. The man
who works here is very small in stature, and has a high treble
voice, a puckered face, a white beard, and two sparkling black
eyes which flash out upon you from behind a large pair of
spectacles. Everything about him has a nervous mobility like
quicksilver. Always talking and gesticulating, he fetches out
old pictures when a visitor comes, and looks at them inclining
his head to the right and then to the left ; then he puts him-
self into the attitude of his net-menders or his potato-gatherers
for the sake of verification, draws great landscapes in the air
with his arms, sits down so that he may get up again imme-
diately, searches for something or other, and at the same time
recalls a remark which he has read in the newspaper. Even
when engaged in painting, he paces thoughtfully between whiles
up and down the studio with great, hasty strides, bending
forward with his hands clasped behind his back.
One part of this studio is separated from the rest by a great
screen, and behind this screen one catches sight of a very striking
picture. Suddenly one stands in the room of a Dutch fisherman's
family. Through a window composed of dull panes there falls,
subdued by a muslin curtain, a grey, dreamy light, which tones
the whole room with mysterious atmospheric harmonies. In it
there stands an ordinary table of brown wood, a few straw-
bottomed chairs, a bed, a cradle, and one of those wheel-chairs
with the help of which little children attempt their first toddling
steps. Everything melts in dim shadows, everything white passes
into grey and black. Familiar peace and lyrical melancholy rest
over all. Here it is possible to paint the air as Israels paints it
Here the phantoms of the dusk take shape and misty forms grow
solid. Here are created those simple scenes from the daily life
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244 MODERN PAINTING
of the poor. Here sit those old women with their hard folded
hands, their serviceable ty^Sy and wrinkled, weather-stained faces ;
here the poor peasant's child learns to run in his rolling-chair,
and here the fisher's family assemble round a dish of smoking
potatoes. Few have made such a study of the milieu in which
their figures, move as Israels has done ; few have felt in the same
degree that every object in nature, as in life, has its peculiar
atmosphere out of which it cannot exist In his pictures the
subject and the atmosphere are in perfect harmony. For in reality
the existence of these poor folks is passed in dim twilight, only
now and then irradiated by a fleeting sunbeam, until it gradually
becomes entirely dark, and death throws its mysterious shadow
across their life.
Yet here one makes the acquaintance of only one Israels.
This same melancholy lyric poet is an innately forcible artist in
his pictures of fishermen. With what a grand simplicity did he
paint in his " Toilers of the Sea " this grey, boundless element
beneath a leaden sky, and these huge, weather-beaten seamen
with a heavy anchor upon their shoulders, wading through the
water and spattered by the waves ! And what simple joyousness
there is in his pictures of children ! Duranty has said finely of
one picture from the master's hand that it was painted with
" pain and shadow ; " but these others has he painted with " sun
and joy." As he tells of death with its dark grey shadows, he
celebrates young life in all the laughing liberty of nature. His
fishermen's children aire sound and fair, and have rosy cheeks.
They move beside the blithe fresh sea, where the tremulous
waves heave with delight beneath the caressing sunbeams and
beneath the blue sky, where the little white clouds are passing,,
as it looks down in its clearness upon the green luxuriant fields.
Amongst the modems Israels is one of the greatest and most
powerful of painters, whilst he is, at the same time, a profound
and tender poet Surrounded by all the deft painters of technique
and virtuosity, he stands out as an artist whose sentiment is
deep enough to make a great impression without conjuring tricks.
No one understands so well how to subordinate the work of the
brush to the general mood of the picture. He is a simple poetr
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HOLLAND 245
great in rendering humble people and little things — an artist
who moves in a narrow circle, but one who has penetrated his
material until it has yielded to him its most intimate emotion — a
man who has not passed through life unmoved, and has therefore
an entirely personal utterance as a painter also. Certain of his
etchings almost touch Rembrandt in depth of sentiment for
nature, classical simplicity, and suggestive power. They reveal
a painter who observes the least things — a strip of washed linen,
the grass in the sun, the pale yellow sand of the sea — with a
kindling eye and a well-nigh religious fervour. How charming
are these little ones at play with a paper boat by the sea ! What
a mild and peaceful element the dangerous ocean has become
upon this morning ! And by what simple means has the impres-
sion of a limitless expanse been reached ! With a few strokes he
has the secret of rendering the moist atmosphere and the tender
tones of the sky. Parts of the beach with the sun shining over
them alternate with shadowy chambers, the powerful outlines
of raw-boned seamen with delicately sketched fisher-children.
A peasant woman sits on the seashore before the smooth waves,
another works in her hut, where the dusk is drawing on ; a child
lies in the cradle, a quiet, wrinkled old woman, enveloped in the
soft twilight, warms her wearied hands at the stove. All these
plates are exceedingly spirited, sometimes lightly improvized,
capricious, and wayward, sometimes polished, rounded, and fully
worked out, but always free, pictorial, and having a personal
accent, and rendering gesture and expression with absolute
sureness. Josef Israels has never made a retrograde step, has
never been ensnared by the commercial instinct, but has grown
greater continuously ; and it is due to his power of self-criticism
and force of character that he now stands as the recognized head
of Dutch painting.
In him is embodied the strength of modem Holland. He has
been a pioneer not merely in subject, technique, and colour ; for
in many-sidedness also there is not one of the younger genera-
tion who can touch him. Each one of them has his own small
field which he indefatigably cultivates. One paints only girls by
the seashore ; another merely dim interiors ; this man town-scenes
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246 MODERN PAINTING
with a misty sky ; another greyish-brown landscapes beneath a
melancholy and rainy firmament ; another the rich, luxuriant,
green, and heavy soil of Holland ; another level banks with wind-
mills and red-roofed houses, detaching themselves from the dull,
glimmering hues of monotonous grey clouds, — ^but every one
paints a fragment of Israels.
That painter who has such a joy in colour, Christoffel Btssckop,
in these days also lives at the Hague ; he is only four years
younger than Israels, and he, too, laboured with power to effect
the revolution of Dutch painting. His teachers in Paris were
Gleyre and Comte, the latter of whom has exerted a peculiarly
strong influence upon him, little as Bisschop has followed him
in subject The sole historical picture of his, contributed to
the exhibition of 1855, was " Rembrandt going to the Anatomical
Lecture." Born in Leuwarden, in Friesland, as a painter he
settled in later years in his birthplace, where so many old
costumes with gold chains, lace caps, and gay gowns falling in
heavy folds are still preserved in use ; and here he became the
painter of Friesland as the Belgian Adolf Dillens was that of
Zealand. Those great old painters of interiors, De Hoogh and
Van der Meer, were his guides in the matter of technique. Sun-
light falling into an enclosed space could scarcely be painted
more luminously warm. Like a great column of dust tinged
with dim colours of the rainbow, it pours in through the ground
window, falls full upon the opened leaf of the folding door, upon
the boards, and the deep red cover spread over the table and
embellished with a large-patterned border upon a white ground,
while in this golden sunshine which floods the whole room there
are usually seen to move a couple of quiet and peaceful figures.
A little old woman, perhaps, steps into the room to beg the young
wife for a crust of bread, or a husband and wife sit of an evening
by the cradle of their youngest child, or a girl in a white cap
stands at the window absorbed in a letter which she has just
received from her lover.
Gerk Menkes loved to paint the mist upon canals, where
the trekschuiten (general passenger boats drawn by horses)
glide quietly along crowded with busy people. Homely
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247
Dutch family scenes,
young mothers with
children in dim
chambers — deep and
genial works of the
finest tone — were
painted by Albert
Neuhuys, A pupil of
Israels, Adolf Artz,
delights in the
delicate bloom of
autumn : pale grey
meadows with thin
grass, over which
there arches a grey,
pallid sky, tremulous
with light; noon-day
stillness and paths
losing themselves in
the wide grey-green
plains through which
they wind lazily with
a long-drawn curve ;
loamy ditches, where
silvery spotted thistles
and faint yellow autumn flowers raise up their heads arid and
athirst Potato-gatherers, shepherd girls, and children at play
enliven these wide, sad levels. Cafi and studio scenes are
usually the work of Pieter Oyens, who, before his migration to
Amsterdam, was a pupil of Portaels in Brussels, where he
acquired a richer, more energetic and incisive style of painting
than is usually to be met with in Dutch art
Performances as fine and charming as these figure-pictures
are the Dutch landscapes. Here, likewise, the flower of Dutch
painting is not so luxuriant and does not catch the eye so much
as that of other nations, though it is well-nigh more tender and
fragrant The Dutch have been the cause of no novel sensations.
iHan/sttuigt pnoto.
Bisschop: "Sunshine in Home and Heart."
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MODERN PAINTING
Neuhuys: "A Rustic Interior.*'
[HanfstdHgl photo.
and troubled themselves little about those technical problems
which have busied the more searching spirits amongst the French
Impressionists, yet in discreet and delicate feeling for nature
no artists amongst the classic and contemporary painters of
modern landscape have so nearly approached the fine masters
of Fontainebleau. The atmosphere, almost always charged with
moisture, which broods over the flat and watery land in Holland,
subdues and veils the sunlight softly, and gives succulent fresh-
ness to the vegetation ; and Dutch painters have the secret of
rendering in most refreshing pictures all this native landscape,
which has no charm for a dull eye, though it is so rich in the finest
magic. There a windmill is whirring on the hill, there the cows
are pasturing in the meadow, and there the labourers go down of
an evening to the shore of the sea ; and the soft air impregnated
with damp, and the delicate bloom of silvery grey tones en-
veloping everything, produce of themselves "the great harmony"
which is so difficult of attainment in clear and sunny lands.
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In the first place
let mention be made
of Jongkindy that
fresh and healthy
Dutch Parisian, who
only became known
in wider circles after
his death in 1891.
Born in Latrop in
1 819, Jongkind left
his native land early,
and was for some
time in Dusseldorf,
and then went for
•good to France,
where his import-
ance was at once
recognized by some
of the fine spirits in
that country. In
1864 a critic of the
Figaro wrote : "In
the matter of colour
there is nothing
more delicate to be seen than the landscapes of Jongkind, or
if there is it must be the delicious works of Corot. One
finds the same naYvet^ in both, the same bright, pearly grey
sky, the same fluid, silvery light. Only Jongkind is some-
what more energetic and corporeal, making fewer concessions
for the sake of charm. A few energetic accentuations, thrown
in as if by chance and always in the right place, give
his pictures an extraordinary effect of vibration." Jongkind,
indeed, by his whole nature, belongs to the group of Fontaine-
bleau artists, and it would be impossible to write a history
of French landscape-painting without remembering the exquisite
and charming pictures of this Dutchman. Diaz interested
himself in him from the first, and, without exercising any
VOL. III. 1 7
Artz:
[Hatifsmngl photo,
•The Goatherd."
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250 MODERN PAINTING
positive influence, Daubigny was very closely connected with
him.
Jongkind is a personality in himself, and followed the general
movement in his own fashion. He delighted in water and dewy
morning, moist verdure, and the night sky, with a moon shining
with pallid rays and shadowed by silvery clouds. What he has
to give is always a direct rendering of personal impres-
sions. Although broader and more impressionistic, he some-
times recalls old Van der Neer, who also felt the witchery
of the moon, and loved so much to roam of a night in the
neighbourhood of Amsterdam and Utrecht Like the old
Netherlandish painters, Jongkind is nlost at ease in regions^
connected with humanfty. Houses, ships, windmills, streets, and
village market-places, and all spots that have any trace of human
U^our, are dear to him. In Paris he painted life on the Pont
Neqf, the houses on the banks of the Seine, lit up by the pale
light of the moon and a thousand gas-lamps, the old churches-
find out-of-the-way alleys of the Quartier Latin, the barren
ground of suburbs just rising into existence, the activity of
crossjng-sweepers in the ^arly morning. He knew, as no other
man, the buried corners of grey old Paris, and their population^
which still has a tinge of something like provinciality. In
Norm^ipdy he was charmed by the primitive character of life
on the seaboard. And from Holland, whither he is often led
by the force of early reminiscences, he brings back momentary
sketches of the canals, where the murky water splashes against
dark barges ; of villages in mist, where the sun plays coyly upoa
the red roofs ; of windmills upon green meadows ; of moist
pastures, dim moonrise, and fresh phases of morning such as
Goyen loved. In Nivernois, about i860, he painted the faint
grey paths of sand, white cottages in the glare of dazzling light,
and the quiver of sunbeams in the dry leaves of the autuma
trees ; and in Brussels and Toulon the narrow tortuous lanes,,
swarming vividly with street-life. His technique is at once broad
and delicate, piquant and powerful. Everything has the throbbing
life of a sketch.
Jongkind was a pupil of laabey, and as early as 1852 received
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HOLLAND
2S3
Mauve : •* A Flock of Sheep."
[Lathui ac.
a third medal in the Salon. But after that his pictures were
rejected by the committees, and it was only at the Paris
Exhibition of 1889 that he came out in his full importance. As
a rule, he still laid weight on the construction of his landscapes ;
from the old Dutch masters he derived his pleasure from an
architectonic building up, and he took pains to " compose *'
his pictures, placing trees, ships, houses, and people in such a
way as to ensure, as far as possible, a rounded whole. Never-
theless he was a modern through his feeling for transparent
air; he was one of the first to give a serious study to
atmosphere, to the play of reflections, and to the fleeting
alteration of tones. This makes him an important link between
the landscape of 1830 and contemporary Impressionism.
Both Jacoi and IVillem Marts worked in Holland upon
parallel lines — Jacob being a very delicate artist, striking the
most notable chords, whilst Willem is warmer, a thorough easy-
going and phlegmatic Dutchman. The earth in the latter's
pictures is a plump nurse caressed and wooed by the sunbeams.
Best of all he loves the hour when the sky becomes blue once
more after a storm, and the first rays of the sun glance upon
the rich turf and the rushes of the pond. Leaves, boughs, and
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MODERN PAINTING
trunks all glisten
with moisture. The
wind shakes the last
raindrops from the
branches, and they
fall, scattering the
earth with a thou-
sand little pearls.
The grey moss
spreads itself out
luxuriantly, and is
once more soft, rich,
and verdant. The
large black snails
move upon the
ground rejoicing in
the damp, and the
cows which are
resting breathe with
satisfaction the
damp air of the lush
meadows drenched
with rain. Jacob
MariSy whose eye has been educated by Daubigny, is softer in
feeling, and more graceful, poetic, and dreamy. By preference
he paints pictures of Dutch canals in the neighbourhood of
Amsterdam and Rotterdam, pictures which show great refinement
in their brownish-grey, their breadth and clearness of vision, and
quiet harmony, or else he paints parts of the beach in the
Scheveningen district, or windmills soaring like great towers
in the foreground high above the flat land, or little low houses
rising into the dull, grey, rainy air. The delicacy of modern
plein-air painting is united in his pictures with- the tender
softness of the traditional clare-obscure. And often a spot of
vivid red or dark violet has a piquant effect in the ashen-grey
harmony, a thing which is at once dim and luminous, soft and
precise, simple and subtile.
lAibert phoio.
Mesdag : " Evening."
{By permission of th* Berlin Photographic Company^ ih«
owners of th4 copyright.)
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HOLLAND
25s
De Haas: "Cows in a Meadow.**
[Hanfstdngl photo.
Mauve^ that admirable master of harmony who is so vivid
and spontaneous in his water-colours, has also this tender, melan-
choly poetry of nature, this underlying mood of depth and sadness,
which renders him so sympathetic in the present age. Daubign/s
simple, idyllic, rustic joy in nature has in him become tinged
with a sense of suffering which allies him with Cazin. A dreamy
mist, a thoughtful silence, rests over his Dutch landscapes, and
the wind seems to utter its complaint among the leaves. The
dusk, and damp, rainy days, and all the minor keys of nature
has he especially loved.
In H, W. Mesdagy who paints the sea in all moods, Holland
possesses one of the first marine painters of the world. Since
Courbet, few representations of the life of the sea have been
rendered with such fidelity and strength of impression. Whereas
the Belgians, Clays and Artan, never leave the shore, in Mesdag
one beholds the sea from the sea itself and not from the land ;
one is really on the water alone with the ship, the sky, and the
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256
MODERN PAINTING
waves. And whilst
the Belgians take
special joy in the
smiling ocean, the
prismatic iridescence
of sunbeams upon
the quiet mirror of
the waters, Mesdag
chiefly renders the
moment of uneasy
suspense before the
storm. As a rule
in his pictures the
sea lies heavy as
lead in a threaten-
ing lull ; only a few
lightly quivering
waves seem to be
preparing for the
battle that they will
fight amongst them-
selves. Overhead
stretches a grey,
monotonous, and
gloomy sky, where
sometimes, although rarely, the sun, glowing like the crater of
a volcano, may be seen to stand. Yet it may be admitted that
a certain want of flexibility in his nature is the cause of his
repeating his most forcible note with too much obstinacy, and
at certain points he is outmatched by others. For example,
the seascapes of Israels surpass Mesdag's in freshness of vision
and lightness of touch, those of Mauve have the advantage in
dreamy tenderness of conception, and Jacob Maris commands
the expression of lonely grandeur in a fashion which is
peculiarly his own. Compare Mesdag's seascapes with those of
his fellow Dutch artists, and we find the best clue to the charac-
terization of his art. His power, like Bisschop's, is essentially a
Oelrichs pho/o.]
Breitner : " Horse Artillery in the Downs."
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C. H9Hi9chtl rtpr.^
Matthew Maris: ''He is coming.'*
{By ptrmiasion of Messrs. Dowdeswell <^ DowdeswellSf th$ owners oj the copyright.)
[Hole sc.
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HOLLAND 259
material one — ix. he is a real realist. Israels, Maris, Mauve
paint things as vehicles interpreting personal and emotional
moods. They try to express sadness, grandeur, tenderness ;
nature's reality is to them only a means, not an end in itself,
as it is to Mesdag, the broad, steady-^oing Dutchman of the
North.
Speaking of him it has been necessary to emphasize the dis-
tinction between his realism and the more spiritual endowment
of others. Let this distinction be borne in mind ; for though
Dutch pictures would seem to have a remarkable family re-
semblance it is a firm and sharp line of classification. True it
is that all Dutch art of the seventies is characterized by a
dignity resulting from good traditions, a quiet mood of con-
templation occasionally verging on narrowness, a dark, warm,
and almost sombre tone, singular taste and purity, and a certain
repose and kindliness of feeling. But for those who enter deeply
into this intimate art it is easy to draw a line dividing the Realists
from the sensitive Impressionists. Amongst the former with
Mesdag and Bisschop we find Bisschop*s pupil Klinkenbergy
who from his master learnt how to paint sunshine. The light
of clear March days generally rests upon his pictures, brightening
the fronts of neat brick houses, which are reflected in the still
water of canals. De Haas paints the Dutch and Belgian lowland
landscape, its cloudy, dull-blue, Northern summer skies, and the
cattle or donkeys grazing amongst the grass of the dunes. Then
there is Lodewijk Apol, who delights in wintry woodlands, where
the leafless boughs are covered with a sparkling mantle of snow,
frozen waters, and whitish-grey clumps of trees vanishing softly
in the misty air. A more subtile hand and eye are revealed in
the work of Paul Josef Gahrtely the painter of the polders, the flat
landscape of which assists the impression of air and light and
boundless distance. All these names belong to the older
generation. But within the last ten years a number of younger
artists have sprung up, and, as might have been anticipated, more
novel tendencies have been displayed. Some of these men indeed
have merely advanced upon the old lines. There are Breitner and
Isaac Israels, who have created, under Manet's influence, wha
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26o MODERN PAINTING
might be called the New Impressionism, an art more passionate,
agitated, energetic, and daring than the old art of intimate emotion.
They abandon themselves to the full tide of life, endeavouring
to arrest the fleeting revelation of a single moment. Their
technique also is broader than that of the elder men : form is
not sacrificed to intimacy of feeling ; it seems almost swept away
in nervous energy of movement and the massing of colour. Such
artists as these could not but break the subtile quietude that had
rested so long over Dutch art. They longed to come to the
free use of their senses and their limbs, like the young husband
in Bjornson*s comedy NygiftCy who was mastered by an irresistible
impulse to uplift his voice and dash himself about lest he should
lose the use of both voice and limbs in the silent, antiquated
mansion of his father-in-law.
Still the younger school of Dutch painting had no need to
struggle against academic art, and hardly the need to fight for
their own hand against the great masters who had preceded them.
Where both the older and the younger generation are of genuine
metal all that the latter need is the liberty to follow their own
way when their turn has come. And so in Holland there was
no cry^ raised against established reputations. On the contrary,
the younger artists of Holland have never ceased to do honour
to such men as Israels, Maris, Mauve, and Bosboom ; and it might
almost be urged that these masters have never been so well or
so highly appreciated as they arc now by their juniors. Yet
these juniors were no followers. Theirs was an entirely different
turn of mind and genius. Next to the above-named Neo-Im-
pressionists we find, on the one hand, those who were influenced
by the wave of mysticism sweeping over the world of literature
and art at the end of this century. And on the other we find
the men of brain-power rather than of sentiment, the analysts
and psychologists, the acute observers and distinct expressionists.
In mysticism it was Matthew Marisy a brother of the two land-
scape-painters already mentioned, who had first of all shown the
way.
Both Jacob and Willem Maris bore witness to the invincible
power of Dutch art which made two essentially Dutch masters
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j^-
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HOLLAND
263
AmU9rdamm$r.'\
Veth: Josef Israels.
[Hentschel photo se.
of men who were the sons of an Austrian father, but in Matthew
the hereditary Teutonic passion for mediaeval mysticism broke out
again. Yet the influence of Holland, his father's adopted country,
was not wasted upon him : his mystical tendencies were controlled
by the faculty of observation. His early pictures have an ex-
ceeding great charm of their own, a direct simplicity of motive
and a poetic purity of expression both in line and colour. His
Gretchen, for example, is a mediaeval maiden under the spell of
a mystical love that gives her a look of fairy unreality. Indeed
she more nearly resembles the devoted Katchen von Heilbronn
of Heinrich von Kleist than the more robust heroine of Goethe.
By degrees reality lost its grip on the painter, and his visions
grew mistier, gaining at the same time in lonely grandeur.
Yet the more he tries to evade reality the stronger a certain
sensuousness seems to hold him in its grasp. The forms hidden
under the veil of his dreamy visions assert themselves, rise and
grow, as if they were to burst forth after all. This wrestle
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264 MODERN PAINTING
between the animal and the mystical life in the painter's spirit
to some extent mars the unity of his art, yet makes it appeal
to us with a deeper emotional force and a grander imaginative
power. The hermit-painter, living near Lx)ndon in utter solitude>
is, after all, a human being with latent passion.
Travels in the East and the love of mediaeval legend have
quickened the same tendency to mystical contemplation in
W. Bauer, His water-colours, his lithographs, and his etchings
are all of them filled with the vibration of very subtile emotions,
expressed in the lithographs and etchings with a curious nervous-
ness of intercrossing fibrous lines. In some of his etchings again
there is an amplitude of vision, a grandeur of mass, and a halo
of light which recall the work of Rembrandt in this field of art.
fan Toorop was the first to bring a tribute from the Dutch Indies
to the art of the mother-country. He worked his way through
impressionism and " pointellism " to a mystical symbolism which,
however, emanates from Villiers-de-rislerAdam and Odilon Redon
rather than from the Indies. This symbolist art of Toorop's is
as remarkable for its high power of expression and its delicacy
of handling as for versatility and facility of imagination. But,
after all, symbolism, which by sheer force of reaction against
the national tendency to realism had at one moment become,
the cry of the new art-movement in Holland and had won
another true and subtile adept in young Thorn Prikker, could not
long hold its own among a people which, although sometimes
approaching in its art to the symbolical through simplicity and
grandeur, had always derived it instinctively from reality, with-
out-seeking it in abstract forms — the domain of philosophy, not
of art.
Of the other tendency in modern Dutch art — to return to
more directness of expression, and to arrive at a greater intensity
of psychological power than the great Impressionists had aimed
at — we find examples in the portraits hy Jan Veth and Haverman,
They are entirely different from such powerful creations as Josef
Israels has lately shown in this line. Those by Israels are freely
subjective; the painter will treat the features and expression of
his sitter with considerable freedom, making the portrait speak
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HOLLAND 265
of his own moods, and giving it the character with which it
looms in his imagination. But these younger men take great
pains to penetrate into the actual mind and spirit of the person,
rendering them with the utmost directness. Neither their im-
agination nor their sentiment is allowed to run away with
them, and they aim at the subjection of all their powers to the
guiding and analyzing brain. As a matter of course, this attitude
influences their technique and makes it rigid and strict, until
they feel so sure of their handling that they can allow them-
selves enough freedom to devote some attention to charm of line
and unrestrained simplicity. Somewhat the same difference from
the older school, although hardly so pronounced, we find in
the landscapes of Tholen -and Karpen, whose attitude towards
nature is indeed more reserved, and who aim at a pure and
-direct expression of forms and atmosphere rather than at the
free impressionism of Jacob Maris. And although too much
may be made of these distinctions, yet they are real enough to
show that Dutch art has more variety than a superficial observer
might suppose. At the first glance the pictures of modem
Holland seem to have one great family resemblance, as has
already been noted, yet a constant current of evolution, often
influenced by movements abroad, of which Dutch artists have
been keen students, has been flowing forwards ; and so far from
stagnating, Dutch art is now as fresh and varied as in the old
<Iays of its glory.
-VOL. 111. 18
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CHAPTER XL
DENMARK
The kinship between Danish and Dutch ^inting.^Previous history
of artistic efforts in Denmark. — Christoph Vilhelm Eckersherg
and his importance,— The Eckersberg school : Eorbye, Bendz, Sonne,
Christen Kdbke^ Roed, KOchler^ Vilhelm Mar strand, — Italy .and the
East: J, A. Krafft^ Constantin Hansen, Ernst Meyer, Petzholdt,
Niels Simonsen, — The national movement of the forties brings
painting back to native soil: influence of Hoy en, Julius Exner,
Frederik Vermehren^ Christen Dalsgaard. — T?ieir intimacy of feeling
in opposition to the traditional genre painting, — The landscape-
painters : Johan Thomas Lundbye, Carlo Dalgas, Peter Christian
Skovgaardf Vilhelm Kyhn, Gotfred Rump, — The marine-painters :
Emanuel Larsen, Frederik Sorensen, Anton Melbye.— Their import-
ance and technical defects,— Carl Block sets in the place of this
awkward painting which had national independence one which was
outwardly brilliant but less characteristic, — Gertner, Elisabeth
Jerichau-Baumann^ Otto BachCy Vilhelm Rosenstand, Axel Helsted,
Christian Zahrtmann,— After the Paris Exhibition of 1878 there
came into being the young school equipped with rich technical means
of expression and, at the same time, taking up the Eckersberg tradition
of intimate and delicate observation : Peter S, JCroyer, Laurits Regner
Tuxen, August Jerndorff, Viggo Johansen, Carl Thomsen, H, N,
Hansen y Otto Haslund, Irminger, Engelstedy Lauritz Ring, Erik
Henningsen, Fritz Syberg.-^ Painters of the sea and fishing : Michael
and Anna Ancher^ Locher, Thorolf Pedersen, — The landscape-
painters : Viggo Pedersen, Philipsen, Thorwald Niss, Zacho, Gotfred
Christensen, Julius Paulsen,— The **free exhibitors :*^ Joachim and
Niels iikovgaard, Theodor Bindesboll, Agnes Slott-Mdller, HarakT
Slott-Moller, J F. Willumsen, V, Hammershoy, Johan Rohde^
G, Seligmann^ Karl Jensen,
DENMARK IS a new Holland, should any one be pleased
to call it so, only it is Holland with a purer atmosphere
and a clearer sky, Holland less rich in soil and less luxuriant ;.
it is a country more thinly populated and one where the
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DENMARK 267-
inhabitants are more dreamy. In accordance with this likeness
in the character of nature, the transition from the one school
to the other is almost imperceptible in art As painters of
interiors and landscape, the Danes join issue with the Dutch
by the touching delicacy of feeling with which they paint the
likeness of their beautiful country, its domestic life, its woodlands^
and its lakes. And, successful as they have been in acquiring
technique in Paris, they, too, avoid making experiments in pUin
air and in the last results of Impressionism. They are almost
fonder than the Dutch of swathing themselves in soft dusk and
floating haze. Indeed what distinguishes them from the latter
is that they have less phlegm and more nervous vibration, a
softer taste for elegiac sadness, that tender breath of dreamy
melancholy which is in the old Danish ballads. What they
have to express seems almost Dutch, but it is whispered less
distinctly and with more of mystery, with that dim, approximative,,
hazarded utterance which betrays that it is Danish.
Do you know the park near Copenhagen, that lovely pleasure-
ground where the old Danish beeches bend their heads together
rustling and fill the air with drowsy fragrance ? From the
Sound there comes a faint, subdued murmur which echoes low
and tremulous through the forest. Across the earth flit the
soft shadows of the beeches, and the warm sunlight plays
between them. Everything is gathered into a large, peacefully
dreamy uniformity, which has a hidden melancholy. A nation
which grows up amid such surroundings will become more
sensitive in its feelings and more delicate in organization than
one which lives amongst mountains and rough crags. The-
fragrance and ringing echo of this strange, soft nature render
the nerves finer and quicker in vibration. Have you read
Jacobsen? Can you recall the figures of Niels Lyhne and
Mogens and Marie Grubbe, filled as they are with gentle and
dreamy devotion, so unsubstantiaj that they live half in reality
and half dissolve in misty visions, possessing so much tender
sentiment — sentiment which is indeed tender to excess — and
crumbling away the moment a rude hand draws them from the
world in which they live? Do you recollect the verses which-
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Ji68 MODERN PAINTING
Mogens hums softly to himself, " In Sehnen kb ich^ in Sehnen "—
**I live in my longing, in my longing"?
The same mysterious fragrance which breathes from the
works of Jacobsen, the dreamy disposition to lose consciousness
of self, that melting away and vanishing in mist, suggesting the
soft outlines of the coasts of Zealand, is likewise peculiar
to Danish art. It, too, has something abashed in spirit, an
infinite need for what is delicate and refined, introspective,
diffident, irresolute, fainting and despondent, youthful and in-
nocent, and yet glimmering with tears, a yearning that is like
sadness, a renunciation that finds vent in elegies that are still
and keenly sweet. It also avoids the cold, clear day, and the
sun, so indiscreet in its revelations. Everything is covered with
soft, subdued light ; everything is silent, mysterious, luxuriating
in pleasant and yet mournful reveries. Melting landscapes are
represented in lines that vanish in mist, and with indecisive
<lepths and low tones. Or there are dark rooms, where tea is
upon the table and quiet people are leaning back in their
chairs. The fire is burning in the stove with a subdued and
pleasant noise. On the table stands the petroleum lamp, shed-
•ding a mild dim light through the room. And the blue smoke
of cigars mingles with the reddish glow from the fireplace,
which casts a reflection upon the carpet, whilst the soft rain
outside is drumming on the window-panes. And what an old-
fashioned grace the furniture has, the great mahogany tables
and little secritaires resting upon slender voluted legsl It is
not mere blockish, indifferent furniture, for it has been in-
herited and cared for, and it is narrowly allied with the lives
-of men. With what a genial, confiding air does it seem to
regard the proceedings when the family are assembled at table,
when the water boils and there is a clatter of tea-things ! And
when there is society, how bashfully it presses against the wall,
as though it were shy before company ! On the boards upon
the window-sill old-fashioned flowers bloom in pots spotted with
green, and old-fashioned family portraits hang upon the walls
with a slightly bourgeois air of complacency.
Amongst ourselves, where there is a general inclination to
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DENMARK 269.
regard distant regions as half-barbaric — merely because nothing
is known about them — people for a long time looked down
upon this modest, but essentially healthy Danish painting. It
was only at the last great exhibitions that the epoch-making
appearance of the young Danish school showed what a fresh
artistic life was stirring within the limits of this little Northern
kingdom* Through the works of the young painters attention^
was directed to their elders, for it was not to be assumed that
such blossom of art had grown up in the night
As is well known, Denmark is not a site of ancient civiliza-
tion. Before the period of Thorwaldsen every artistic tradition
was wanting, and the country was never the stage of a con-
tinuous and historically important development of art. From
the Middle Ages it can only point to traces of feeble artistic
activity in a few Gothic buildings which are massively mono-
tonous. It was not till late, in fact in the beginning of the
seventeenth century, that the cultivation of artistic interests was
pursued with greater animation under the government of
Christian IV. Christian V. (1670 — 1699) endeavoured to catch
a few beams from the sun of Louis XIV., and sent for numbers
of French artists who enriched the country with manifold imita-
tions of Lebrun and Coustou. Under Frederik V. (1746 — 1766)
an Academy of Art was founded at the Castle of Charlottenborg
and organized according to the French model by the sculptor
Saly, from Valenciennes. The new quarter of the town which
rose about this time in Copenhagen — Frederiktown, as it is
called — gives in its palaces, and in the equestrian statue of
Frederik V. executed by Saly, a tolerably complete picture
of the Danish Rococo period, and it was not particularly rich.
A generation later, Danish artists, indeed, headed the school,,
but its tradition remained predominantly French or German,,
and of the Classical type. Jens fuel distinguished himself as
a graceful portrait -painter, and the animal -painter Gebauer
executed little pictures in the style of Esaias van der Velde.
Through the sculptor Wiedewelt, Winckelmann's theories were
made known in Copenhagen. The painter Abildgaardy an
academician of sound learning and many-sided culture, found
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^7o MODERN PAINTING
his ideals in the Italian masters of the Renaissance, especially
Michael Angelo. Amongst such men Asmus Carstens and
Bcrtel Thorwaldsen, who made such an important contribution
to the artistic development of Europe, were destined to receive
their schooling.
If this first period of Danish art was either French or Classical,
and in any case imported and without individuality, it must be
owned that the national epoch of Danish painting was introduced
with Eckersberg, and formed by a group of men who stood on
their own ground, representing only Danish life and nature as
it is in Denmark. The consideration of their pictures affords
little aesthetic pleasure to the eye. The execution in almost all
cases is angular and diffidently careful, the representation of forms
paltry, and the colour arid and without anything luminous. But
the substratum of sentiment makes atonement for the inadequacy
of the technique. At a period when a spiritless reproduction of
old ideas and old forms of civilization went by the name of
idealism, the Danes were the first independent naturalists ; at
a time when artists saw things almost exclusively through the
medium of literature, they proved themselves, in the special
sense of the word, to be painters, and therefore they had no need
afterwards to wage the great war of liberation which had to be
gone through in all other places. They had no need to learn
■gradually that nature may be artistically rendered without con-
ventional composition, nor was there any necessity for them to
be taught that there was a world better than that of commonplace
^enre humour. For, from the very first, they plunged into reality
instead of treating it with playful condescension, and were pro-
tected from the inflated sentimentality of the "village tale" by
having a practised eye for what was properly pictorial. Like
the Dutch of the seventeenth century, the Danes had worked
faithfully to nature, and in their deep and honourable devotion
they merely wished to paint nature itself according to their own
true and personal conception ; and whilst the falsely idealistic or
narrative works of the rest of the Continent vanished, at a later
time, from painting, these Danish works, which contained in
themselves fresh and natural germs, are not yet antiquated,
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DENMARK 271
although they may be old-fashioned ; to some extent, indeed,
and in their essential conception, they may still be said to hold
sway over living Danish art
Christoph Vilhelm Eckersberg was, in many ways, a remark-
able artist In the matter of technique he is almost antediluvian ;
he is old-fashioned in his hard and sharp portraits, old-fashioned
in his large historical pictures, old-fashioned in his petty land-
scapes and carefully drawn and leaden sea-pieces. Nevertheless
his pictures have remained more classical than those of his
contemporaries, who donned the classic garb as if for eternity.
He has a simpler and more familiar expression for the things we
know ; he gives warmth by his purity of feeling : everything he
does bears the impress of a peculiar sincerity, as if he went bail
in his person for the truth of what he painted.
Eckersberg belongs to those modest but meritorious artists
-who have been little honoured in the earlier period, artists who
have given something novel in place of reminiscences from other
-centuries and the classical imitation popular in their time. He
had, like Carstens, studied under Abildgaard, and after that he
£nished his course of training under David from 1810 to 181 3.
From 1813 to 1816 he was in Rome, where his friend Thorwaldsen
-was, at that time, high-priest of art And just as he was at pains
to follow the turbulent painter of the Revolutiori in his Parisian
studies, so his pictures from Rome, which are to be seen in the
Thorwaldsen Museum, are under the sway of Roman Classicism.
But when he returned home in 18 16, and as a man of tough
•energy undertook the guidance of Danish art, it was soon seen
where his talent actually lay. He executed about this time a
portrait of himself in which he is painted looking into the world
with honest, dark-blue eyes, a massive, sensible, and judiciously
observant man. This likeness shows him, indeed, both as a man
and as an artist, and supplies a curious commentary on the
tedious historical pictures which he composed in Paris and Rome.
In outward respects these same pictures are concerned with the
system of ideas everywhere in favour at the period, and they
borrow their subjects from the Bible or classical antiquity.
■"Bacchus and Ariadne," "The Spartan Lads," "Ulysses slaying
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27« MODERN PAINTING
the Suitors," all painted before 1816, are amongst the most
jejune works produced at the time. But compared with earlier
Danish pictures, and compared with the classical productions of
contemporaries, they are true to nature. Eckersberg supplanted
the tall, flabby, mannered, swaying figures of Abildgaard, with
their swollen muscles and generalized faces, by stiff frames which
have no flow of line, and earnest faces which know nothing of
the Cinquecento ideal of beauty. There is nothing antique about
them except the title, for the basis of his art was an absolutely
accurate study of the model. Even where he arranged human
beings in tableaux vivants^ illustrating a story provided by ancient
authors, direct study of nature was the corrective he applied to the
mannerism of his time. And this sound and thorough observation
of nature, however unattractive it might be in technique, is yet
more characteristic of his landscapes. Even in Rome this quiet
Jutlander had produced a series of little pictures sharply to be
distinguished from the classical views and drj' architectural pieces
of his contemporaries. For it was not the beauty of architecture
as such that had any charm for him. The backyard of a modem
Roman hut gave him as much pleasure as a classical ruin, and
a meadow in spring with blossoming flowers was as dear to him
as the colonnades of St. Peter's. Here, too, were colour and
the play of light. His pictures owed their existence less to an
antiquarian than to a pictorial interest, which is saying a goo<}
deal considering their period.
And after Eckersbei^ returned home he remained the same,,
both in his outward many-sidedness and in the essential principle
of his art. Biblical pictures and altar-paintings were ordered
from him, and he painted " The Passage of the Israelites through
the Red Sea" in a very sensible fashion, and gave a thoroughly
prosaic paraphrase of Raphael in his " Madonna as Queen of
Heaven." From the Court he received a commission to decorate
the throne-room of the Castle of Christiansborg with representa-
tions from Danish history, and accomplished this task also in
an honourable and conscientious manner. Everybody came to
him to have portraits taken, and he satisfied everybody by
making an accurate likeness. Over and above this there is
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DENMARK 273
an important class of pictures which were not ordered, and
show the more clearly what he was aiming at himself: scenes
from everyday life, landscapes and seascapes. He is the first
who, in that age, which limited its enthusiasm to gods and
heroes, carried out the maxim that everything may be painted,
historical or present, sacred or profane. All his life he maintained
his love of light and air, land and sea. Sea-pieces, which had
been neglected since Joseph Vernet, were introduced by him into
art once more. What distinguished him, indeed, was an extra-
ordinarily pure, fine, and inwardly felt conception of what he
saw in reality in the life of men, upon land or water ; and
however dry and prosaic his pictures may be, they are none
the less sincere, honest, and sound. He will have nothing to
do with meaningless poses and empty phrases. Honest and
thoroughly deliberate observation, combined with severe restraint
from everything merely dazzling to the eye, is of the essence
of his art.
Even Ihis colouring is in this respect characteristic. The
older painters, Juel and Abildgaard, strove to effect an artistic
harmony. They used cloying colours which soothed the eye,
and endeavoured to give their pictures the tone of the old
masters, or that metallic brilliancy which accorded with the
gilded decorations of the Rococo period. And Eckersberg had
also proceeded in this fashion in his "Bacchus with Ariadne."
But afterwards these soothing colours, aiming at decorative
effiect, vanished from his works. . He then endeavoured to
render local colours as faithfully as possible ; if they were also
brusque and harsh, he at least rescued objects from the bath
of sauce, from the pictorial tone, in which Abildgaard had
steeped them, and he placed them in the open light of day.
In him everything receives its healthy, natural illumination, and
that is principally what gives his pictures a plebeian effect
beside those of delicate Rococo painters. In the proximity of
the portraits of Juel, harmonized in a golden tone, the figures
of Eckersberg in the Copenhagen Gallery looked as if they had
just washed, with such ingenuousness and sincerity did he
place the healthy red in the cheeks of his girls boldly against
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274 MODERN PAINTING
the white skin. No doubt there is a good* deal which is
prosaic and material in this method of creation. For the poetry
of colour he had but little feeling. But when, after looking at
the pictures of Eckersberg in the Thorwaldsen Museum, one's
gaze wanders to the " Sleeping Girl *' of Rtedel hanging opposite,
there can be no doubt that outward prettiness and sugary
coquetry are on the side of the German, and health and veracity
on that of the Dane.
Every one notices with facility that Eckersberg's activity fell
in a time when plastic art was set above painting, and the
plastic element in pictures was specially accentuated. This
draughtsmanlike treatment, which knows little of the pictorial
conception, is what chiefly gives his works their antiquated Mr.
Eckersberg paints things much as they are in themselves, and
too little does he paint the impression received of them. His
observation is positive, solid, firm, but it is not light enough
with what is light, nor fleeting enough with what is fleeting.
His strong point is the rendering of objects with opaque
surfaces in hard daylight when everything is distinctly visibla
Dusk and clare-obscure, which dissolve the outlines of things,
are no affair of his. Optical phenomena, like rainbows, have
a heavy and material appearance in his works. What the
moderns leave to be indistinctly divined he paints substantially
and palpably. He is too careful of outline. What a hard and
disagreeable effect is made by the contours in his picture of the
interior of the Colosseum ! In his effort to attain outline and
local colour he even gives them to objects which have none.
The clouds look like masonry; the water, which in its endless
variety is almost more wayward than the air, and plays, at the
same time, in bluish, greenish, and whitish tones, has only one
hard, monotonous colour in Eckersberg, and no transparency,
no brilliancy nor glitter. It is only when one overlooks these
defects that one can enjoy the incomparable study of the
movement of the waves, and the admirable drawing of ships;
one may remember, indeed, many more effective seascapes, but
few so satisfactory in the consideration of details.
In Eckersberg everything has been quietly, logically, and
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275
EcKERSBERG : The Nathanson Family.
i i flt£r phota.
deliberately thought out and seen before being painted ; every
point stands where it should ; he has his perspective and anatomy
at his fingers* ends. His sea-pieces, with their little ships rocking
upon waves of porcelain, are frigidly and aridly painted, but very
delicately observed, and drawn with great confidence. And his
portraits, limited as they are from the pictorial standpoint, must
be reckoned amongst the best of their period as regards sincerity
in the study of nature. In the group of the family of the
merchant Nathanson, in the Copenhagen Gallery, he does not
attempt to embellish his models, but attacks them, roughly no
doubt, but straightforwardly. Certain of his pictures of children
have a winning innocence, and some of his portraits of women are
worthy of being named beside those of David. In particular, he
has painted with a careful brush and much delicacy of feeling Anne
Marie Magnani, the friend of Thorwaldsen, and also the master
himself, whom he revered as a god. Here he has a real touch of
greatness in spite of his minutely fine work of detail. The head
and hands are drawn with laboured diffidence, as in all his pictures,
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MODERN PAINTING
\X i
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ECKERSBERG : A SeASCAPE.
(.i Ul^€ /tnu$0»
and the stiff shirt painted with such refinement is unpictorial.
But all the more moving is the infinite, and thoroughly Pre-
raphaelitish, devotion with which he gave himself up to rendering
this head, the religious piety with which he reproduced every
little hair and every furrow in the face ; and by these fresh,
naturalistic qualities Eckersberg has become the ancestor of
modern Danish art. Positive and realistic, too honest to make
a pretence of raising himself to the level of the great old masters
by superficial imitation, but all the more zealously bent on
penetrating the spirit of nature, and loving everything to the
minutest detail, weak in imagination but profound in his feeling
for nature — such was Eckersberg himself, and such was the
painting developed from the groundwork of his intuition of
nature.
All his pupils — Rorbycy Kiichler^ Eddelien^ Bendz^ Christen Kobke,
Roedy and others— were, like their master, undiluted naturalists,
healthy and virile, like Peter Hess, Biirkel, Franz Kriiger, and
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DENMARK
^77
L Tili^r phfitii.
Hermann Kauflf-
mann. Scenes from
the studios of
painters, sculptors,
and engravers, and
from the life of
peasants and
soldiers, were their
oisual subjects, and
all their pictures
show that, under
the influence of Eck-
^rsberg, a homely
spirit of observation
had entered into
Danish artists. At
a time when all
Denmark was wild
over Oehlenschlager
and soft moonlit
nights, they brought to all their work an entirely honest and
objective veracity which had no trace of romantic sentimentality;
they never dreamed of beautifying their figures, but handled
forms honestly as they found them. Still less did they feel
any temptation to treat life humorously, like the contemporary
£enre painters, for they had no higher aim than to grasp
seriously and with unfeigned feeling what was familiar and
<iirect Sonne^ who is specially esteemed in Denmark as a
battle-painter, was one of the first to devote himself to the
representation of the life of the Danish people. He had little
technical equipment, but deep and fine feeling, and his touching
picture in the National Gallery, "The Sick at the Grave of
St Helen," is one of the most valuable works of his generation.
He creates astonishment by the manner in which he shows
himself an epic painter upon the grand scale in his admirable
sgrafittos — alas! almost destroyed — upon the walls of the
Thorwaldsen Museum, where he represented the return of the
Bbndz : " In the Studio."
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MODERN PAINTING
Sonne : " The Sick at the Grave of St. Helen."
ITiligt photo.
master to Copenhagen, and his enthusiastic reception by his
countrymen. Eckersberg's successor as teacher in the Academy
was Jdrgen Roed^ and as such he maintained Eckersberg's
traditions ; he proved himself specially eminent as a portrait-^
painter, but has also painted, quite in the manner of his teacher^
good architectural pictures, scenes from popular and ordinary life,,
and several religious works. He had Eckersberg's confident
draughtsmanship, and, like Eckersberg too, he had little imagina-
tion or feeling for colour, albeit his colours are more discreet and
refined.
It is only Vilhelm Marstrand who occupies a peculiar position.
Whereas Eckersberg looked at nature with the quietly observant
eye of a painter, Marstrand is a genre painter in the full sense of
the word — the only man in Denmark who had " ideas ; " and he
is the Danish Wilkie and Schroedter, Madou and Biard, in one.
His contemporaries did him honour as the most spirited painter^
the most gifted master of characterization in Denmark, on the
score of this " broad and healthy humour." And, strangely
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DENMARK
279
Marstrand: "Sunday on the SiljaNsee."
enough, even those who are living now cannot shake this opinion.
What a strange thing humour is in painting! In general it is
as much discredited in these days as the dramatic exaggeration
of the historical picture. But as there is always a true distinction
between wild and genuine passion and histrionic gesticulation, so
true humour should be distinguished from affected. Delaroche's
historical pictures fail in their effect, because, being of a tame
and peaceable spirit, he painted sanguinary deeds with the
sf^vageness of Mieris ; and Adolf Schroedter's whimsicalities are
equally lukewarm, because, being a home-made and sober per-
sonage, he produced them with an insipid, self-complacent smile.
The theme was not in accordance with their species of talent. But
Delacroix sweeps one on with him through the whole gamut
of the passions ; it is not a deft stage-manager, but a bold spirit
of flame that is here displayed. And in his narrower field
Marstrand has likewise remained fresh. The delights of colour
are not demanded from him ; his whole art is directed to the
observation of the spirit The crooked nose, the blotches of a
toper's face, the heavy gesture of a dissolute and brutalized man^
wrinkled features and vulgar figures, merely serve to make the
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Marstrand: "Erasmus Montanus.**
\jaig9 photo.
nature, trade, mania, and habits the more distinctly salient.
Here we have not forms and colours, but dissipation, intem-
perance, brutality, cunning, avarice, hebetude. It is astonishing
how he brings out of every figure the essence of its being ; the
realistic force with which he sharpens characteristic traits to
make a character-piece is amazing. To press more deeply into
the forge where his spirit works, one passes from his pictures
to his masterly sketches with the pen, and one pursues his
sparkling point and humour with still greater interest where
colour makes no disturbing effect. Marstrand is never weari-
some, for he sets one tingling with eagerness, and, as he fully
accomplishes his purpose, his art is justified ; in fact Marstrand
offers a parallel in art to the broad comedy of Holberg, Baggesen's
graceful whim, and Heiberg's extravagant waywardness.
From 1829, when he exhibited his first pictures, as a pupil
of Eckersberg, he entered at once uf)on this humorously satirical
•course. He painted the people of Copenhagen and the Philistine
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DENMARK
281
Marstrand: "The Visit."
{Tiligt photo.
class in their domestic occupations, or the vagaries of tavern life,
men shaving and making comical faces over the process,
miserable rejected suitors, or family parties with gay interludes.
And with his eye for humour he saw matters which were just
as droll in Italy, where he stayed for the first time from 1836
to 1843. His "Festival of St Anthony in Rome" is a pyro-
technical display of wit and humour, and his Italian vintage
scenes are full of waggish fun and comical resource.
He was, therefore, altogether in his element when he painted
the celebrated pictures on Holberg's comedies after his return^
and these occupied him during several years. Whereas Lorentzen
and Eckersberg attempted the illustration of the Danish Molifere
without much felicity, Marstrand struck the popular tone quite
admirably. In 1844 he executed the "finery scene*' from
Erasmus Montanus, the following year the " Visit to the Woman
VOL. III. 19
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^8^ MODERN PAINTING
Lying-in/' in 1852 the "Collegium Politicum/' and in 1859 the^
*' coffee scene " from the Would-be Politicians and the ^* court
scene" from The Fortunate Shipwreck. Marstrand had, indeed,
a spiritual affinity with Holberg, and thus moved with the
greater freedom in this field. His " Visit to the Woman Lying-
in " would do honour to Hogarth, with such satirical keenness are
the characters brought out The illustrations to Holberg drawn,
not so long since, by Hans Tegner, and with a spirited and
graceful pen, have not thrown these Marstrand pictures into the
shade. In addition to Holberg, Don Quixote was a constant
inspiration to him, and one should place the tedious illustrations
of Adolf Schroedter beside his to see the high flight of
Marstrand's fancy.
Indeed Marstrand was a most various painter. His com-
prehensive work, "Sunday on the Siljansee," executed in 1853,
without having any of the "points" of genre painting, has
been kept more or less in the style of Teniers' great picture
of the fair. And in another picture, " The Visit." of 1 857,
the satirist has become a tender, idyllic poet A peaceful
atmosphere of Sunday rests upon an old room with solid furni-
ture, where one perceives that throughout generations the same
family has lived in easy prosperity. It is this very interior
alone which gives the whole its homely Sunday air. And here
we have the familiar visage of a young man who is courting a
girl. A handsome naval officer has entered the room, and laid
upon the table a little bouquet neatly tied up. The young lady
has given him her thanks in a subdued voice, and her aged
mother casts meaning glances at her, while an embarrassing
pause has interrupted conversation. Thus it is a genre picture,
though one which has been rendered with great charm.
Meanwhile he had made repeated journeys to the South, to
Venice and Rome, and painted, as a result, a series of life-size
Italian pictures in the fashion of Riedel: girls at the doors of
inns, children playing with cats, hunters languishing in love, and
the like. His treatment, which was at first ornamental and
smooth, seems broader in these later works, and aims more at
magnitude ; the colouring, which was at first cold, is warmer
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DENMARK 283
and deeper, but at the same time darker and more suggestive
.of sauce. The evil influence of these journeys was that the
liumourist of earlier days, in his last period became solemn, and
painted Church pictures. " Christ with His Disciples in Emmaus "
was executed in 1856, and his "Feast of Christ," which was
crowded with figures, in 1869: as a piece of composition this
latter has striking beauty, but it is of little pictorial value. The
best work of his last years is a series of portraits, amongst
which are those of Madame Heiberg, the painter Constantin
Hansen, and Professor Hoyen. But here also Marstrand's
strength does not lie in the loving observation of detail, though
the old satirist possessed a keen eye for soul and character, and
had the secret of giving his pictures something remarkably
spontaneous, living, and spirited.
Yet his influence was a danger to the further development
of Danish painting. His life was divided between Italy and
Denmark, and by him, if for a short time only, Danish painting
was alienated from the soil of home. The rage for travelling to
Italy and the East came into vogue.
A large Danish colony was active in Rome about 1840, and
a halting place was often made in the Munich of Ludwig I.
Here it was that Bendz painted that fine picture of Finck's Cafe
which may be found in the Thorwaldsen Museum. Ernst Meyery
who studied long under Cornelius, threw himself with great
2cal into the representation of Roman and Neapolitan street-
life. KiUhler, who afterwards became a monk in Italy, painted,
to say nothing of representations of street-life, religious pictures
— "Joseph and his Brethren," and the like — Diisseldorfian in
-colour, but free from sentimentalism. Constantin Hansen^ in his
mythological frescoes in the entrance hall of the University of
Copenhagen — where Hilker painted the ornamental decorations —
endeavoured, after the example of sculptors, to introduce the
world of Northern gods into Danish painting, and he is also
lepresented, in the Copenhagen Gallery, by scenes from Naples
and prospects of Roman ruins. The pictures of /. A, Krafft^
who was several years senior, and of the landscape-painter
Fetzholdty are more or less of a parallel to the little Italian
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a84 • MODERN PAINTING
pictures of Biirkel. Niels Sintonsen, the battle-painter, made
a journey to Africa and returned with pictures of the desert
And Rorbye, also, set himself to satisfy the demand for Eastern
pictures.
In his novel Only a Fiddler Andersen has given a delightful
account of the life of Danish artists at that time in Rome,
their strenuous work and their jovial meetings, when the
" Pontemolle " was celebrated in the Caf6 Greco. " The walls,"
writes Andersen, "were hung with crowns, and in the centre
a garland of oak-leaves formed an O and a T, indicating the
names Overbeck and Thorwaldsen. On the benches round
the tables artists were seated, both old and young, most of
them being Germans, with whom tavern life has its origin.
They had all of them moustaches, beards, and whiskers, and
certain of them wore their hair in long locks. Some sat in their
shirt-sleeves, and others in blouses. Here the famous old
Reinhart was to be seen in his buff waistcoat, with a red cap
on his head. His dog was tied to the leg of his chair, and
yelped lustily in company with another dog close by. There
sat Koch, the Tyrolese, the old artist with a jovial face. There
sat Overbeck with bare neck and long locks streaming over his
white collar, dressed like Raphael." And Emil Hannover in his
subtile and thoughtful book on Kobke justly points out of
what importance Italy and intercourse with the Nazarenes really
were for Danish artists at the time. They learnt to accomplish
with skill the monumental tasks set them in Denmark during
the thirties, and acquired a feeling for beauty of form and
rounded composition. But they were drawn aside from the
sound course of Eckersberg. What they achieved in the way^
of decorative paintings rested purely upon study of the old
masters. And Italian representation of popular life led to the
same ethnographical painting of costume, and sentimental
romanticism in dealing with robbers, which flourished everywhere
else at the time. Even the German principles of instruction,
communicated to them by Ernst Meyer, brought half-measures-
into Eckersberg's naturalism. A visit to the Copenhagen col-
lection of engravings on copper proves that, during those years,.
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DENMARK 285
work was scarcely ever done after painted studies, but simply
from drawings. There was a general "theory of colours"— of
which Ludwig Richter has also written in his Lebenserinnerungen
— and artists noted rapidly with a pencil upon the leaves of
sketches the colours which were to be employed later. Many
lent such drawings to each other to be used for pictures
reciprocally. And plaster heads and the ideal of beauty likewise
exercised their influence, which was deadly to the spirit
It was the great national movement resulting in the democratic
constitution and the war with Germany, the period from 1848
to 1850, which first threw Danish painting back upon its own
resources. This mood found its earliest expression in the
writings of the able historian of art N. HOyen, who fought
through a long life with all the power of unusual eloquence to
bind the practice of art more narrowly than before with the
life of the nation. A land which had given Thorwaldsen to
the world, he urged in a lecture on March 23rd, 1844, On the
Conditions for the Development of a National Scandinavian Art,
should not perish by the imitation of alien methods, but ought
to have the pride to secure for itself a peculiar position in
European painting. What, he went on, was only possible upon the
path indicated by Eckersberg, was to portray what lived in the
spirit of the people. The Danish artist had in the first place
to learn to feel at home in his own country. Here were the
tough roots of his strength. Only in this way could Danish
art, like the Danish language and poetry, find a peculiar.
Northern method of expression. Upon the Danish islands it
was that painters should study the people, not for the sake of
bringing home pictures of costume, but to become familiar, on
all sides, with the bluff, serious life of nature, and the rough-
grained fisher-folk. When they once succeeded in marking the
original peculiarities of race in the people itself, and seizing
the character of the inhabitants of the North in all its in-
dividuality, it would, perhaps, be possible for a grand art, with
a special seal of its own, to be developed in Denmark. After
this lecture of Hoyen, a new impulse is to be noted in Danish
painting of landscape and popular life. Italy and Rome were
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MODERN PAINTING
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Exner: "The Little Convalescent."
no longer a meeting-place for artists. The generation of painters
which had grown up amid the ideas of freedom and nationality
which shook the country before the war of 1848 had no higher
ambition than to depict Danish life, and that no longer in a
mocking fashion like Marstrand, but with cordiality and devotion.
Neither Vermehren, nor Dalsgaard, nor Exner, know anything
of the forced humour of genrCy which existed at that time upon
the Continent. Nor do they take pains to instruct an international
public as to customs and usages in Denmark. They painted
simply what had for them pictorial attraction, and, despite their
angular and detailed treatment, and their monotonous style, so-
void of charm, they, in this way, make some approach to the
quiet poetry which is delightful in the old Dutch masters.
The least refined of the trio \s Julius Exner ^ and he often comes
perilously near the line where what is child-like becomes childish
and what is sweet becomes sugary. Generally speaking Exner
revolves in a prescribed circle of subjects : old men in night-caps
sealing letters by candle-light, village inns where there is dancing
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' • DENMARK, . iSt
and people are drinking punch, fish- women with a red kercKief
before a cup of coffee, lads and lasses telling each other's fortunes
by cards, children going to see their grandfather on Sunday, old
men offering little girls flowers to smell, little cousins playing with
a baby who has just been christened, young peasant mothers
putting their children to bed, musicians playing at a wedding,
baptisms, blind-man's-buff, and children sharing their breakfast
with cats and ravens or watching their father puffing clouds of
smoke for their edification. In him preponderates the ethno-
graphical element — old-world chambers and gaudy national
costumes which have held their ground upon the islands of
Amager and Fano. The figures are sometimes life-size, which
makes the vulgar colouring all the more obvious, and the faces
are often contorted like masks. Nevertheless several of his
earlier pictures of children are not yet antiquated. They have
something of the homely simplicity of Ludwig Richter. In an
age when German painters merely turned children to account for
comic situations, or showed off their precocious humour, Exner
portrayed the inward life of little people without mawkishness or
deliberate comicality. His rosy-cheeked girls are all scrubbed
and combed and prettily dressed up, yet they are far more human
than the little angels of Meyer of Bremen. Even in the simple'
picture of the little convalescent receiving a visit from her friends
every species of cheap humour has been avoided. The girl has
the sense of having gone through something serious ; and seriously
and with diffidence do the others advance towards her.
In Frederik Vert^ehren Danish reality becomes something
almost arid. His pictures have no substratum of genre that can
be set down in so many words. An old man who delivers bread
for a baker at distant farms, tired with walking in the noonday
sun which broods over the heath, has sat down upon a milestone,
and is looking mildly and vacantly before him. In the poor and
wretched heath tract of Jutland a shepherd is standing, a strange
figure, the living product of this rude soil, one accustomed to live
with no other companions than his lonely thoughts, his sheep,
and his dog. He neither whistles nor. does anything funny, as
he certainly must have done in German genre pictures. As a
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Vermehren : " A Farmyard/
[Tiltgt photo.
matter of fact he is knitting socks. A strange air of sadness is
in his gaze. It is as if he himself felt the contrast between the
boundless horizon and the limited ideas of his own brain, which
rise no higher than the stunted bushes of the heath. Or else
there is the strand of the fishing village of Hellebaek on a bright
summer evening without a breath of wind. Ships pass far out
upon the smooth, glassy sea. And a pair of children are playing
by the water's edge, and an old fisher sits upon a stone with a
great basket of muscles. He is doing nothing interesting, and
contents himself with quietly breathing the pure salt air and
gazing without a thought in his mind upon the sea. Or, again,
there is a poor peasant's room with a cosy old tiled stove. Warm
light streams in through the open door and mingles with the
dull atmosphere of the chamber. Everything is quite still inside.
Upon a bench by the stove a little old woman is sitting, shelling
peas^ while a girl of ten years old is at her feet entirely occupied
with her book. Each of them has her own ideas. The little one
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289
is reading in Bible history about
Abraham and Joseph, while the
old woman sits in quiet com-
merce with far-off memories.
And time goes by unmarked
by them both. Or there are
a pair of poor orphan children,
the girl with a large canvas
wallet and the boy with an old
basket : they are going on their
usual morning round, begging
alms, and have just entered a
peasant's kitchen ; the carefully
burnished pots and pans giving
no evidence of prosperity, but
much of cleanliness and the
sense for order. A German
genre painter would have set
the housewife and the children
into some relation with the
public. In bestowing a piece
of bread-and-butter the woman
would have assuredly said to
the spectator, " See what a good
heart I have." The children
in receiving it would have said,
'*See how ashamed we feel to
be begging." In Vermehren the old woman has cut the hunch
of bread without any sentimentality simply because it is
customary, and the childi'en take it quite as quietly and without
affected gratitude. They are accustomed to waiting and begging.
Even when cavalry soldiers are burnishing their sabres, they are
altogether quiet and serious about it in Vermehren, and do not
indulge in laughter, song, or humorous behaviour.
Christen Dcdsgaard is far more important than either, and
fascinates the beholder by the fine manner in which he analyzes
the inward life of men and women^not so much the obvious
Coptnhagtn: :^tocAhoim.j
Vermehren: *'The Shepherd on the
Heath."
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external emotions
of joy and sor-
row, as the more
refined shades of
reflection, consi-
deration, quietude,
deliberate thought
Like Vermehren,
he paints exclu-
sively the peasants
of his home, and,
being a peasant's
son himself, he
does so simply,
and from the
standpoint of the
peasant. Women
mending nets, the
workshop of a vil-
lage carpenter, an
old fisher jesting
with girls, the gunner on furlough, the shepherd distrained for
rent, and the churching of a young wife are the subjects of
pictures which represent him in the Copenhagen Gallery — ^works
of simple cordiality and fine psychological depth.
In characterization Dalsgaard is the very opposite of
Knaus, discreetly indicating what the latter would obtrusively
mark in italics. This delicate pictorial observation, which
preserves him from all false ingenuity, and from narrative and
humorous tendency, renders him congenial even in these days.
His pictures are not produced through any stitching together of
separate pictorial notes, but through an inward unity of the
whole. Nor does he seek those catastrophes and complications
without which, in the days of historical painting, the picture of
manners could not exist in other countries ; on the contrary, he
has a preference for quiet life in nature and in the world of men.
Just as he delights in the serene and peaceful sky, so does he takfe
Vermehren: "The Peasant's Cottage,'*
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DENMARK
«9^i
delight in the life
of men in its repose,
and shows this in
his pictures as in a
clear mirror. There
are no hasty move-
ments, and none
of that transitory
play of countenance
which is so often
forced. The lyrical
character and the
charm of tempera-
ment in his pictures
rise from the depth
and earnestness with
which he loses him-
self in the quiet
poetry of ordinary
life. Thanks to the
seclusion • of their
country, the Danes-
were not tempted to
prepare their works for the picture market Thus they avoid the
painting of anecdote, all significant moments, and the celebration
of interesting festivities. They depict the silent life of customary
behaviour, and, even here, only the subdued and more reserved
feelings : they have no care for agitated action, no dramatic inter-
play of characters ; but merely the life of every day, in its con-
sistent, regular course, the poetry of habitual existence. Nothing
extraordinary is represented in their pictures, and having no
desire to seem ingenious they do not go to pieces on the danger-
ous reef of triviality. In an age when the genre painters of the
Continent placed models in costume in some arbitrary situation
and against some arbitrary background, and there set them acting
in a little theatre for marionnettes, the essential principle of art
in Denmark was *^fnettre Fhomme vrai dans son milieu vraiJ*
[Tillgt photo,
Verhehren: "Visiting the Sick."
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The landscape-
painters went hand-
in-hand with these
painters of peasants.
It was precisely here
that Eckersberg's
strict observation
of nature, although
he neither painted
many nor great
landscapes, created
a firm basis. Once
when a pupil laid
before him a picture
" of his own compo-
sition " for criticism,
Eckersberg said to
him : ** My good
pupils always wish
to do better than
God Almighty ; they ought to be glad if they could only do as
well.'* These words were not forgotten by his successors. True,
the older Danish landscapes were called " Boredom painted gjreen
on green" by a German critic in 1871. But since we have ad-
vanced so far as to be out of charity with the forced sentiment
of the German " pictures of mood " of that period, the temperate
charm of these Danish works finds a more responsive eye. This
painting of landscape is not the result of any backward glance
cast upon that of the past nor of any side-glance upon that of
contemporaries. In an epoch when only the clamorous splendours
of nature in alien parts were elsewhere held worthy of pictorial
representation, the Danes buried themselves with tender devotion
in the peculiar character of their island country ; they have
not wearied of faithfully portraying its heaths and forests, its
level regions along the coast, and its grass-green beech-woods.
Everywhere a discreet homeliness and an absence of painting
for effect is the rule. The delicate intimacy of nature in
\Tillgt photo.
Dalsgaard: ''Children on the Doorstep."
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DENMARK
«93
Denmark has the
purely original fresh-
ness of something
newly discovered.
Christen KobkCy
who died young,
one of the most
talented pupils of
Eckersberg, and an
admirable portrait-
painter beside,
painted the poor
and still growing
tracts environing
the great town —
strips from those
districts which are
almost as much
town as country,
those smooth, placid
regions, so melan-
choly in their poverty, which were brought into art at a far later
date in France and Germany.
An excellent painter of animals and a powerful and attractive
master was Johann Thomas Lundbye, who set his models straight
in front of him and transferred them to canvas with a thoroughly
Northern keenness of eye. His pictures — cowsheds, grazing
cattle, and forest landscapes — are perhaps wanting, like all of
their period, in the features of greatness, but they rarely fail
in charm. Lundbye observed the somnolent temperament of
cows with remarkable energy before Troyon, and without seeking
droll and entertaining points like Landseer. As a landscape-
painter he has, at times, bright tender notes, skies of fine
silvery blue, which evince an exceedingly delicate eye for colour.
And his pen-and-ink drawings and clear, spirited water-colours
are entirely charming, almost French in their grace, and of a bold
simplicity ; and the simpler the medium the more eloquent he is.
Copenhagen : Stockholm.]
Dalsgaard : ** Waiting."
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LUNDBYE : *' Cows IN A MeADOW.'*
ITUt^ photo.
But Lundbye did not quite live through one human generation,
for he perished as a volunteer in the war of 1848, which also
robbed Denmark of another gifted painter of animals in Carlo
Dalgas. Yet a number of others, who were accorded a longer
period for their labours, followed him upon his course.
The gifted interpreter of the beauty of Danish beech-woods,
Peter Christian Skovgaard^ was the son of a peasant belonging
to the north coast of Zealand. His mother travelled every
year with the children to her parents in Copenhagen y and
the lad was driven in a tilt-cart along the Kattegut by the
steel-blue sea, and through the luxuriant forests of Frederiksborg.
Here the austere grandeur of Northern landscape was revealed
to him. The long bridge in Copenhagen with its old toll-house
in moonlight was the subject of the first small picture which
he sent to the exhibition of the Copenhagen Academy in 1836 ;
and it is the only moonlight picture which exists by him.
All lyrical vagueness indeed was foreign to him ; he was a
portrait-painter, precise, analytical, and severe, one who saw
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I>SNMARK
295
Copnthagm : Stockholm. "l
Skovgaard : " Sunday Morning at the Thiergarten.'*
what was distant with a keen eye, and saw it as distinctly as
what was near. His pervasive characteristic is^ absohite reality
and plainness; his. favourite light was the cold, pale d^y, the
sober blue of the Northern sky. His earliest picture— one of
1839— which represents him in the gallery of Christiansboi^, is
"A Part of the Tidsvilder Forest." From the high hills, over-
grown with brushwood, where a family of foxes are lurking
in front, there is a wide prospect of the sea, above which
arches a clear, silver-grey sky ; gravel paths lead through the
wood, and the grass is mown. At a period when the German
Romanticists regarded "civilized nature" as wanting in beauty,
and only felt at home in mediaeval landscapes, Skovgaard painted
without a moment's reflection Danish scenes as they were
in the neighbourhood, with their cultivation, their canals and
paths. Sometimes these are parts of the strand, sometimes
woodland clearings from the southern point of Zealand ; every-
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Cop4nhagtus UtockholmJ]
Kyhn : Landscape.
where there was the clear grey sky and the fresh sea air
which he loved. After 1847 he settled himself in the park
at Copenhagen, and no one has explored its secrets with the
same zeaL The pleasant clearings in the forest, with roes,
fallow-deer, and storks, the still sheets of water amid young
verdant wood, the little leaves of which, glancing in the sun,
cast greenish reflections of themselves in the water — these have
been felt with much subtilty and intimacy. With his steel-
coloured tones and his cold, clear air, Skovgaard, who seems
such a sober master, and so fond of the broad daylight, has
the secret of creating effects which are altogether seductive.
Vilhelm Kyhn, who is still living, and appears to grow
better and more young and vigorous with years, is the poet
amongst these Danes— a man of virile artistic nature, of great
truthfulness, and, at the same time, of rich and deep inward
feeling, one who sees in nature the mirror of his own restless
spirit He has a sentiment for wide plains and great lines, for
nature's austere and earnest rhythm of form. The poetry of
his pictures has kinship with the old Danish ballads : their
technique is rough and angular, their mood serious and
melancholy. Great thunderclouds roll over endless plains
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DENMARK
297
Copenhagen: Stoekholm.l
Rump: A Spring Landscape.
overgrown with low brushwood. Or a fresh breeze blows the
light clouds swiftly over the blue sky. The air rises clear and
high over the forest trees, and allows the eye to range over
bright . distances, bounded by hills.
Spring is what attracts Got/red Rump, those clear March
days when the snow melts on the fields, and a fresh, fine,
yellowish verdure breaks forth. The Copenhagen Gallery
possesses a spring landscape by him of the park of Frederiks-
borg, which makes an exceedingly delicate and intimate effect
in its intense bright green tones, in spite of the want of air.
Other masters command more forcible tones, higher imaginative
power, and more dramatic chords, but few had such moving
tenderness, such sincerity, such simplicity, such freshness.
At the same time Anton Melbye, Emanuel Larsen, and
Frederik Sorensen appeared with their sea-pieces, in which they
•depicted for the expert merchant circles of Copenhagen the sea,
and did this with an unsurpassable technical knowledge of
3hips, navigation, waves, and wind. Melbye especially is one
VOL. iiL 20
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MODERN PAINTING
Coptnhagtn : Stockholm.^
Melbye: "The Lighthouse."
of the most admirable sea-painters of all times ; even during
his life he was highly esteemed in foreign countries, and his
pictures are most readily to be found in Hamburg and St.
Petersburg. He had a more masculine temperament than other
Danish painters, and has often portrayed the powerful dramas
of the sea with magnificent force of conception.
The old Danish painting is healthy nutriment, a painting
strong in substance. It is striking in all productions by its
loving and sympathetic understanding for nature, and by giving
that sense of the artist having lost himself in a little world, a
thing which also gives its imperishable charm to old Dutch
painting. And so, at a later time, when, after the victory over
stereotyped Classicism, over the exaggeration of historical
painting, over middle-class genre humour, and over the loud
effects of illustrative landscape-painting, delicacy and the
poetry of nature, truth and sincerity, healthy feeling and
simplicity forced their way everywhere into European art once
more, the Danes had nothing to learn over again, as was the
case with most other nations.
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DENMARK 299
But if they had nothing to learn over again they had to
make very great additions to their knowledge in the matter of
technique.
Since all these painters had been practically thrown upon
their own resources, their technique was always crude and la-
boriously childish. There is, in all their pictures, a circumspect,
diffident manner of seeing nature, while the painting is frequently
suggestive of an oil print, and thin and arid ; the intimate warmth
of their feeling suffers under the smooth varnish of the treat-
ment And any removal of these defects seemed all the less
possible since a diffident system of isolation predominated down
to the sixties. Dreading alien influences, artists were deter-
mined to be thrown upon their own resources, and cherished
the childish fancy that Denmark was the whole world. So the
great movement which was then accomplished in France did
not penetrate at all into this quiet corner of the earth ; nothing
'was known of the delicate and veiled harmonies of Corot, nor
of the powerful solidity of Courbet. Hoyen desired an art
drawing inspiration from the soil of home, and in this he was
not wrong ; only he forgot that technical improvements — like
all newly discovered truths — belong to the whole world, and
that the most various matters may be expressed by the same
method. The consequence of this Wall of China was, that
Denmark, in the sixties, had at its disposal merely a backward
technique which had stiffened in old forms, one which had
grown stale by resisting renovation. In reference to the World
Exhibition of 1867, it was said in the Gazette des Beaux- Arts :
"Amongst all the rooms of the Champs de Mars the little
Danish room is certainly the coldest and most melancholy.*'
Julius Lange had written the introduction to the Danish cata-
logue, in which he expatiated eloquently upon the national
principles of the Danish school. But the critic of the Gazette
made a remark upon it which was quite as much to the point.
" This is all very fine," said the critic. " Mais il ne suffit pas
que la peinture soit nationale^ ni mime qu'elle soit vraie ; il faut
aussi qu'elle soit artiste'' Contact with other countries, which
from this time became more frequent, gradually induced a
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300 MODERN PAINTING
change. The Danes began to grow ashamed of their older
and childishly awkward colouring, and they set themselves from
the close of the sixties to learn to paint.
At first the fears of Hoyen certainly appeared to be valid.
In the place of an awkward, but independent, national painting,
there came, in the sixties and seventies, one which had external
brilliancy, but was cosmopolitan and without character. For
acquaintance with foreign countries had all the effect of a sur-
prise, just as a bend of the road suddenly brings a far horizon
into view : the charming woodland corner which was an entire
world in itself suddenly becomes a mere nook in the landscape,
and its fine, irregular lines appear small and insignificant in
comparison with the majestic features of the distant mountains.
In the effort to choose subjects treated in other countries the
stamp of individuality was lost, as well as that tender feeling
for home sinking to the most inward chambers of an artist's
nature, the feeling those older masters had possessed in so high
a degree.
Carl Block is the leading representative of this group. The
son of a Copenhagen merchant, after leaving the Academy of
Art he had first worked simply, like Vermehren and Exner,
amongst the Zealand peasants and upon the west coast of
Jutland; there he had painted a number of pictures dealing
with the life of the people, pictures which, in their poverty of
colour and plain intimacy of feeling, shared all the merits and
defects of the older Danish paintings. It was a residence in
Rome, from 1859 to 1865, which first made of him the many-
sided artist and great master of technique whom Danes of the
older generation delight to honour, but who gives little know-
ledge of Danish art to any one not a Dane.
In the first place there is in his pictures from life an un-
pleasant genre element, that forced "humour" which the older
painters were so discreet in keeping at arm's length. " An Old
Bachelor," forced to undertake the repair of his trousers, and
displaying a droll clumsiness the while, and " A Roman Street-
Barber," in the midst of his work ogling a pretty woman who is
looking out of a window, were his first hits. Soon afterwards-
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301
Leipzig: SeemanH.]
Carl Block.
at the same time as Griitzner —
he discovered the comic side of
monastic life, and was never
tired of enlivening the public
with monks plucking geese or
applying medicated bags to
alleviate toothache, monks who
are deaf and nevertheless tell
each other scandalous narratives,
and the like. And, of course, in
Italy he could not rest till he
had won the laurels of the his-
torical painter. " Sampson in the
Mill amongst the Philistines,"
" The Daughter of Jairus,"
"Sampson and Delilah," and "The Liberation of Prometheus"
were pictures of technical virtuosity such as Danish painters
had not previously displayed, and they made all the more sen-
sation in Bloch's native land since there had not previously
been any "grand art" there. But a foreigner passes Bloch's
works in the gallery of Christiansborg with a good deal of in-
difference : the attractive qualities of the older Danish painting,
the simple poetry and inward depth, are just what they do not
possess, and what they have is a mere reflection of that which
France and Germany have produced likewise. The two-and-
twenty pictures on the history of Christ which he painted in
1865, on the order of Jacobsen, for a chapel in the Castle of
Frederiksborg which had been built again after the fire, might
have been executed by Gustav Richter. His "Chancellor Niels
Kaas, upon his Deathbed, giving his Young Ward, Prince Christian,
the Keys to the Vault where the Crown Jewels are preserved,"
and "King Christian as Prisoner in the Castle of Sonderborg,"
stand — even as regards their aniline sort of colour — to older
Danish pictures as a Piloty stands to a Spitzweg. They are
the works of a cultivated and intelligent artist, who has seen
much in foreign parts and has now himself learnt to paint.
On the other hand, they are completely wanting in artistic
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MODERN PAINTING
temperament and all
individuality. Like
those of Piloty, the
heads of his figures
are painted with a
strong regard for the
beautiful, and the
ideas harboured by
their mighty brows
are such as Columbus
on the discovery of
America or the dying
Milton are wont to
have in all this
kind of historical
painting. His " In-
terior from the Age
of Christian IV."— a
young lady getting
out of bed, whilst a
dog runs away with
her slipper— would, very probably, do honour to Schrader. But
that he really was a fine artist when he left oflf imitating others
is proved by his etchings — especially the landscapes — which, in
spite of a certain awkwardness, are amongst the most delicate
and charming which have been executed since Daubigny.
A certain routine of luxuriant painting was moreover acquired
by the portrait-painter Gertner^ the dexterous portrait and animal
painter Otto Bache^ who had little of the personal note, and
Mrs, Elisabeth Jericliau-Baumann^ who was trained in Diisseldorf
and called by Cornelius the one man in the Diisseldorf school,
on account of her " brusque " style. Axel Helsted, who was
first a pupil of Bonnat in Paris, and then worked in England
and Italy, is with Vilhelm Rosenstand, the pupil of Marstrand, the
last representative in Denmark of that more or less well-painted
genre, principally concerned with humorous or dramatic points,
as Knaus is its leading representative in Germany. He has
Bloch: "A Roman Street-Barber."
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303
Helsted: "The Deputation."
\TiUg9 photo.
spirit and trenchant observation, and to these qualities" he owes
the success which many of his pictures achieved as copper
engravings and as members* plates for the Society of Art. In
one of his works, "In the Villa Borghese," he shows an abbot
engaged in learned conversation with his pupil, the latter fur-
tively looking at a lizard and the old man at a pretty nursery-
maid. A schoolboy going home in "After Lessons" has more
books than he can carry, which is meant to be funny. And in
"The Lecture for Ladies" one of the audience has, of course, to
be yawning, another laughing, and a third, casting enamoured
eyes on the professor. Or else an old gentleman is sitting
bashfully upon a sofa, twirling his hat in his embarrassment, and
unable to screw up his courage to make a declaration of love —
carefully considered at home — to a pretty widow, who is looking
at him with amusement In another picture the town council
are holding a meeting, where one member is making a patriotic
oration, while another has fallen asleep, and a third is laughing,
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IT Ulgt photo.
Helsted: "The Timid Lover."
and a fourth making notes ; one lounges back in his chair,
another is resting both elbows on the table, and a third aflfects
the pose of a thinker, while the servant, the representative of
low comedy, sneaks out of the room with the brandy bottle.
All this is by no means badly painted, only it is very ordinary ;
by little tricks of caricature, by giving his figures noses which
are too long, or by displaying them when they are making £aces^
Helsted tries to win a laugh. Such a painter has certainly none
of the nalvet^ of Kobke and Lundbye, nor has he the subtilty
of the moderns.
Schooled from 1862 to 1868 at the Copenhagen Academy
under Marstrand and Vermehren, Christian Zahrtmann is now a
man of fifty years and upwards. Compared with the group of
painters whose art in so many ways degenerated into a dexterous
calligraphy, a superficial routine, Zahrtmann marks a reaction like
that of the English Preraphaelites when they set themselves
against the theatrical beauty of the historical picture and the
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305
Philistinism of
petty genre
painting. He
is an historical
painter, but in
a manner en-
tirely his own,
an historical
painter re-
sembling no
one else, and
rend e r i n g
things which
are not banal
in an expres-
sive manner
and with a
strong dash of
paradox. He
is a man of
tough will,
who troubles
himself with no other motives than those which allure him, a fine
and bold spirit with whom the unusual is a matter of course;
speaking more generally, he is one of the most knotty and
obstinate personalities who have ever touched a brush, and he
has refused to see with another's eyes or think with another's
brain, or tp allow himself to be influenced by existing opinion,
in a degree which is altogether curious. In a picture called
" Solomon and the Queen of Sheba " he has painted the splendid
and luxurious king as an earnest and pedantic young rabbi, with
lean cheeks and hollow eyes, the seductive queen as a prosy and
learned dame of sedate age and understanding ; and so, frigid to
their very hearts, they are sitting face to face, each in a Persian
gown, and carrying on a serious discussion over the Talmud,
while thin clouds of incense rise from the primitive and meagre
apparatus at their feet Of the beautiful Aspasia he makes a
Copenhagen : IVinkel,]
Zahrtmann: "The Death of Queen Sophia Amelia/
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majestic and
corpulent
matron, who,
with a look
of deep - set
pain on her
broad, mascu-
line features,
is regarding
the bust of
her dead son.
During his
residence in
Italy from
1875 to 1878
he repre-
sented fruit-
shops, girls
bearing loads
of lime, Sa-
bine women
rocking their children, fruit-carriers of Amalfi and flower-sellers
of Florence, and later in Denmark **The Wise and the Foolish
Virgins," "Juliet and the Nurse," and "The Death of Queen
Sophia Amelia ; " but in either case what marks him invariably
is sharp opposition to that false ideality which had at that time
found a home in Danish painting. As a man of reflective spirit,
he disdains, in his pictures of women, to be taken captive by
that beauty of form which is so easily seized; what he chiefly
searches for in a woman is personality and spiritual expression,
rendering the latter as it has come to exist in and through life,
with all the defects of decaying form, with features marked by
suffering or hardened by strife.
Thus he was led to the subject which has been nearest his
heart during more recent years, the subject which he is never weary
of studying, and in which he perpetually discovers new moments.
This is the history of the imprisonment for twenty years of
Lop9nnag€n^ IVinkel.]
Zahrtmann ; " Eleokora Christina reading the Bible.*'
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DENMARK
307
El eon o r a
Christina,
daughter of
Christian IV.,
and ihe wife
of Uhlfeldt.
She has dc-
scribed it
herself in her
Lamentable
Recollections,
This heroine,
whose me-
moirs arc
classic, and
who is dear to
every Dane
this daughter
of a king
thrown into
a dungeon
through the jealousy of a queen, aqd there mocked by her very
servants, is one who nevertheless preserved to the end the pride
of a royal princess and the resignation of a Christian ; for
Zahrtmann she is a kind of incarnation of humanity in the
person of a woman. In a corner of his studio hangs the life-
size original portrait of Eleonora Christina, and opposite a
painting by himself, representing this corner, with two huge
candles burning upon a table beneath this picture and illu-
minating the lofty womanly figure, as though it were an altar-
piece. She is his patron saint, and he has depicted her life in
all its details, as Menzel did that of Frederick the Great.
For long years he buried himself in the history of this
unfortunate princess, made himself familiar with her personality
and her writings, and endeavoured to put upon canvas a credible
picture of her, which should be great in conception and sound
in form, upon the basis of these historical studies. He painted
Copenhagen: IVinM.]
Zahrtmann : '' Eleonora Christina in Prison.*
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Cop€nhagin: lVink9l.\
Zahrtmann : "Eleonora Christina."
her as a young wife by the side of Uhlfeldt, in the cloister and
in prison, as she was when searched by the jailer upon her
entry, as she prayed and as she wrote her memoirs ; he called
her to life once more in such a fashion that through his pictures
there was begun in Denmark a veritable cult of Eleonora
Christina. And to this figure he has given an intense life.
With her large, masculine features, her dignified and benevolent
face, Eleonora seems to have risen from the grave in flesh and
blood, just as she once existed. One feels that the artist has
lived her life through with her, and learnt to love his model.
The expression in these pictures has an air of veracity ; the play
of light is occasionally hard and glittering, but often exceedingly
delicate and full of feeling. As Zahrtmann emancipated himself
from conventional "beauty," so he set himself free from the
dominant idea of colouring. At a time when the brown tone
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DENMARK 309
of galleries held sway, almost throughout, in other places, he
painted in colours as little blended and as sharply accentuated
as possible, and he sometimes attains an effect — especially in
the rendering of artificial light — which almost resembles the
latest experiments of Besnard. His most beautiful picture of
this princess — one replete with a full fusion of soft brownish
tones — represents her in prison, sitting in bed by night, with
her look fixed upon the light that burns on the table, subdued
by a shade. An infinite warmth and a deep peace rest over
the picture ; the white bed, the variously coloured covering, and
the dark walls are under a yellowish-red light, and between the
light and the shadow the figure of the old woman is seen —
a full-bodied matron, sitting quiet and motionless with large,
composed, and thoughtful features, as though she had sat in
this way during many a long night It is certainly not a figure
owing its origin to the traditional sentiments of historical
painting, but a personality with sharply defined features and
spiritual expression. Here is a painter who has dived into the
past without losing his breath ; one who has produced pictures
which are sincere and free from pose, and as earnest and full
of conviction as the life of the heroine they celebrate. Not
the inspiration of the footlights, but the most tender intimacy
of feeling is his essential principle ; and in this sense Zahrtmann
makes the transition to the last and specially modern phase of
Danish art — that which came into being from 1878, the year
of the third Paris Exhibition.
Danish art was national in its first period, although awkward
in technique; in its second period it was more fully developed
in technique, though compromised by an outward imitation of
foreign methods ; but now it appears to have reached a climax
of achievement in point of technique and to have a thoroughly
individual stamp. Millet, Bastien-Lepage, and the other more
modern Frenchmen were a revelation to the young generation
of Danes, and gave them the determining impulses. From these
artists they learnt that there was a broader, truer, and more
living method of understanding nature and expressing light
than the paltry, stippling style of painting in which Eckersbcrg
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3IO MODERN PAINTING
and his pupils were hard-bound. And, at the same time, these
masters announced to others the doctrine that to be an artist
there was no necessity to become international, like Bloch and
his contemporaries — that it was better, like those older Danes,
to draw the most fitting nourishment from the soil of one's
own land. From this epoch we have to reckon with a novel
and most animated Danish art, combining the merits of the
modern French with those of the elder Danes. It attached
itself to the young French school through the attentive study
of tone-values and atmosphere. All the modern seekers and
guides, Besnard, Roll, Carri^re, Cazin, Raflfaelli, and above all
Claude Monet, are still fervently admired and much followed
in the Denmark of these days. But this art has, at the same
time, its deep roots in race and in the Danish land. Equipped
with richer and more complex means of expression, it does
not in any way renounce its tradition of intimate feeling and
refined and tenderly delicate observation. The older artists had
been true ; the younger sought to be true and delicate at the
same time. The painting in Copenhagen and Skagen in these
days is quite different and much better than that of Eckersberg
and Lundbye, but their intimate sentiment for nature is also
possessed by the young generation of artists.
The merit of having paved the way for this fresh develop-
ment chiefly belongs to Peter S, Kroyer, one of the greatest
and most attractive individualities of his nation. Born in
Stavanger on June 24th, 1851, he was left an orphan early
in life and went to Copenhagen, where he was received in the
house of his adoptive father Hendrik Nicolai KrOyer, the
ichthyologist; and he was barely nine years old before his
capacity for drawing was utilized for practical purposes. In
Hendrik Nicolai Kr5yer*s monograph upon parasite crabs the
first drawings of young Kroyer may be found published in
copper-engraving. Various representations of the fishing village
Hornbaek (" A Forge in Hombaek," " Fishers catching Herrings,"
" Fishers on the Stocken," and " Children on the Strand ")
were the first pictures hung in the Exhibition of Charlottenborg
in 1874. In the same year a large cartoon, "David presenting
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DENMARK 311
himself to Saul after slaying Goliath," obtained for him the
travelling exhibition of the Copenhagen Academy, and during
four years of study abroad KrOyer went through that remark-
able course of development which soon placed him at the head
of Danish art as a master of technique. In the older pictures
painting had been harsh and diffident, thin, meagre, and motley
in colour; but, through contact with the French, KrOyer
acquired that refinement in tone and that power of handling
which have since become his distinguishing characteristics. L^on
Bonnat was his first mentor, and a picture belonging to the
year 1878, "Daphnis and Chloe," was his first attempt to
embody in a large painting the new lights which he had re-
ceived in Bonnat's studio. A lengthy residence in Brittany,
where he painted field-labourers in company with the landscape-
painter Pelouse, and collected opulent material for studies,
marked the second stage in his development; and a journey
to Spain and Italy, to which he may have been incited by
Bonnat, the portrayer of Italian popular life, marked the third.
The chief result of his work in Brittany was "The Sardine
Packers," an interior with women cleaning sardines and fitting
them for being packed. In Spain and Italy he painted the
"Women binding Bouquets in Granada," which may be found
in the Copenhagen Gallery, and " The Italian Village Hatmaker,"
which won for him the first medal in the Paris Salon of 1881.
Naked to the waist, and covered with shining drops of perspira-
tion, a powerful masculine figure, by the side of a glowing brasier,
is twisting his felt with his hands over a huge block. Both
his children, likewise half naked, are working in the same way.
An oppressive heat fills the dark room, through the little window
of which a sunbeam is vainly endeavouring to penetrate.
This picture was of the same importance for Danish paint-
ing as Courbet's " Stonebreakers " had been for French and
Menzel's " Smithy " for German. Realism was introduced by it ;
and KrOyer returned home with a foreign sanction upon his
art, and as an accomplished master he took up his old theme,
the representation of Danish life in town and upon the sea-
shore, with fresh brilliancy and renewed vigour.
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CoptHkagtn: Stockholm,]
Kr(5yer : ** The Sardine Packers."
Kroyer, indeed, is one of those rare personalities who can
do almost anything they wish. Pictures in the open air and
interiors, flashing effects of sun upon the strand, mysterious
phases of dusk and artificial light, he treats them all with that
even sureness which makes light of every difficulty. Nothing
short of astonishing in improvization, he has likewise the genius
of a draughtsman. With his pencil in his hand he is in-
defatigable in dashing in a likeness, a pose, or an attitude, and
with an aptitude that is almost invariable; with a couple
of strokes he evokes a physiognomy. " Skagen Fishers at
Sunset " and " Fishermen setting out by Night " were the first
pictures which he sent from Denmark to the Salon. One repre-
sents a number of raw-boned seamen dragging a net over the
tawny sand at sunset. The beams of the setting sun play upon
their clothes, and the night draws on apace. A great silence rests
over the sea, and the large outlines of the fishermen stand out
sharply defined against the obscure sky. In the other picture
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DENMARK
313
Gas. d9S B^attx-Arts.]
[Guirard mc.
Kr3yer : ** Skagen Fishers at Sunset.**
there is the plain of Skagen in the dusk. Two or three white
clouds stand silvery upon the horizon ; the lighthouse has just
begun to show its lights, and a group of fishermen are seated
smoking upon the fine sea-sand. One of them lies upon his
stomach looking seaward. Here and there a sailor emerges in
the vaporous dusk. This exhalation from the sea rests like a
thin violet breath over the whole landscape, and the strange
intermingling of the illumination of moonlight and of the radiance
of the beacons is cast over the figures with an indistinct bright-
ness. In a third most charming and entirely Impressionistic
picture of 188 1, he represented the artists in Skagen at breakfast
There they sit, eight or ten, blond and cheery comrades, glad of
their own existence in the world. The remnants of a frugal
breakfast are still upon the table. And the fresh harmonies
of animated tones play round the physiognomies, which have
been rapidly seized. The following years were occupied with
portrait-painting : to them belong the large family group of the
Hirschsprungks, which was not very successful, and the por-
traits of Krohn, Sorensen, and Georg Brandes, which, in their
VOL. III. 21
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314 MODERN PAINTING
characterization, ease, and freedom from pose, announced the
great pictures of social life with which he made an appearance
in the exhibitions from the year 1887. The earliest of these, the
"Soiree in Karlsberg," represented a number of Copenhagen
artists and scholars assembled at Jacobsen's the brewer's ; and it
is scarcely possible to compose a group with more spirited ease,,
to set guests conversing, and to display them listening or bored
by the entertainment, with less constraint of manner. In
another picture he ventured to paint a party of men, where the
guests are listening to a quartette, enveloped in dense clouds of
smoke — so dense that the flames of the candles are reduced
to a dull spot, while the smoke hangs like a greenish-grey veil
between the spectator and the characteristic heads upon the
canvas. The latter are also portraits of well-known personages
in Copenhagen. The third picture of this year, " A Summer
Day upon the Beach at Skagen," is saturated in the light of
noon. Naked lads are bathing on the strand, and their outlines
have a bluish tinge set against the sky, beaming in Northern
brightness. By an exceedingly slight device — in fact merely by
the various delicate shades of blue and yellow — the idea of
intense heat was produced with peculiar effect. " The Musical
Soiree" in the Copenhagen Gallery belongs to the year 1888,
and is another picture of dim, dusky light, with great natural-
ness in the poses of the company and astonishing intimacy of
feeling in the expression of the listening faces. How soft and
dreamy in this work is the powerful realist who painted "The
Italian Hatmaker" and "The Fishermen setting out by Night "f
Kroyer is a light and mobile artist, always receptive, always
productive, influenced by the French and yet independent, naive
and refined ; he has made his name early in Scandinavia and
Europe, has an eye which nothing escapes, and a hand which
is felicitous in everything. As various as he is bold, graceful
and facile, he solves every difficulty as though it were child's
play, and hazards those very things which are most beset with
peril for the artist.
When the Danish National Exhibition was set on foot in
Copenhagen to celebrate the twenty-fifth year of the reign of
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DENMARK 317
Christian IX,, Jacobsen, who had also made arrangements for the
representation of French art, sent an invitation to Parisian artists,
and had a pavilion built for their works. Pasteur had the honorary
presidency of the committee formed in Paris, while Antonin Proust
actually presided ; and Jacobsen commissioned Kroyer to paint
a group introducing the members. This gave him the oppor-
tunity of showing his cogent force as a master of characteriza-
tion in connection with a problem of light of such a difficult and
artificial character that only a master could have ventured upon
it The proceedings have lasted until late in the afternoon.
Through lofty windows falls the pale, declining wintry light,
whilst in the room two oil-lamps burn with an intense radiance,
illuminating the plans upon the table. The opposition of
this double light, natural and artificial, the struggle of white
and yellowish tones tremulously uniting and falling upon the
faces of the men, has been rendered with astonishing subtilty.
Pasteur, sitting in the middle, is following upon a plan the ex-
planations of the Danish architect Klein. Behind him stands
Jacobsen with Charles Gamier, and Paul Dubois is sitting ta
the right, turning round towards Jacobsen. Antonin Proust,
who is standing, presides over the assembly. And around there
may be recognized the figures of Puvis de Chavannes, taking
hotes, and quite in the front Falguifere, and behind Chaplin^
Barrias, and G^rdme ; upon the other side, from the left, are
Bonnat, Cazin, Roll, Besnard, Gervex, Antonin Merci6, Chapu^
Carolus Duran, Delaplanche, and others. A momentary sketch
could not have a more natural effect, and yet it is just such an
impression as this which can only be rendered by. the most
assured technique in all that regards composition.
Laurits Regner Tuxen, who is standing to the right, in the
corner of the picture, beside Kroyer, is a couple of years junior
to the latter, and came in the same year, in the autumn of
1875, to Bonnat's studio in Paris. By a "Susanna," several
portraits of women a la Carolus Duran, and a large picture,.
"The Boiling of Train-oil upon the West Coast of Jutland," he
showed the Danish public in 1879 how much he had learnt
in the high school of modern technique ; and after renewed
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MODERN PAINTING
residence in Cayeux,
Paris, and Italy, he
settled for good in
Copenhagen in 1883,
where he has now
become the official
court painter, and is
entrusted with those
many " great " com-
missions which the
little country has at
its disposal. Beside
the huge and well-
known picture of
the Danish royal
family, consisting of
no less than thirt>'^-
two figures, he
painted a certain
number of ceiling-
pieces for the Castle
of Frederiksborg :
^* Denmark receiving the Homage of the Estates of the Realm,'*
"The Triumph of Venus," and the like. He is a man of the
world even with his brush, and his ability, which can adapt
itself to everything, has made him an excellent teacher, who has
exercised great influence over the development of Danish painting
through the private school which he founded in Copenhagen,
and who has quickly raised it to a level — especially after Kroyer
had shown the way — which it would otherwise have probably
taken a longer time to reach. Nevertheless, like Bloch, he has
given one more evidence that it is not easy to become cosmo-
politan without losing national peculiarities. So far as I am
acquainted with his works, he does not so much make the
impression of an artist of conviction and individuality as of a
man who has the capacity of doing well whatever may be
demanded from him.
CoptnhagiH : Stockholm.']
TuxEN : '' Susanna and the Elders.*'
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DENMARK 319
A man of deeper and far more genuine character is August
Jemdorff^ originally a pupil of P. C. Skovgaard, and at first
chiefly notable as a landscape-painter working in the spirit of
his teacher. Afterwards he produced several biblical pictures
of great ability, and in particular several portraits, which may
probably be reckoned as his best performances. He has an
incisive and masterly gift of characterization, models with a
precision rare, in our days, and has likewise shown an eminent
<lecorative talent as an illustrator.
What principally marks the present Danish painting is not,
however, the gifted variety, grace, and ease peculiar to these
painters. It has rather an honest, familiar, provincial trait
which has something of tender melancholy. It is like a good
mistress who makes her home comfortable and enjoys sitting
by her own hearth, having, ajt the same time, an interest in
music, poetry, and art. In fact the Dane has really nothing
besides the comfort of his domestic life. His country, which
was once so powerful, has gradually become smaller in its
geographical boundaries and politically insignificant. Since the
time of Christian IV. — in other words, since the Thirty Years'
War — Denmark, which once held sway over Sweden and com-
manded all the Baltic, has steadily declined. She lost the
provinces of Southern Sweden in 1658, Norway in 18 14, and
in 1864 the duchies which were her pedestal. Such a people
must necessarily cling with all the deeper devotion to what has
been left it, its soil and its home. Thus it is that no great
features and no imposing themes are to be found in Danish
painting. When their painters attempt anything of the kind
it is as though their warmth of feeling had passed away and
they were themselves out of sorts, as if they were borrowing
from others and what they did were not their own. But where
Danish painting is entirely itself, entirely the expression of
the spirit of the nation, it broods quietly over a perfectly
simple, ordinary motive, a motive which is almost indigent in
-character. Spreading plants, old-fashioned velvet furniture,
loudly ticking clocks, and petroleum lamps, pleasant talk round
the family table in the twilight, reveries at the piano, or
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320
MODERN PAINTING
half familiar and commonplace
and half ceremonious musical
soiries — such are the materials
of Danish art. Besides things
like these, the Dane paints
with loving devotion the like-
ness of his little country, and
the gracious melancholy of
its soft scenes lives in his
landscapes.
Viggo Johansen is, perhaps,,
the artist who at the present
best represents in a moral
sense this Danish art with all
its inherent qualities. No one
has so combined the old tra-
ViGGo Johansen. ,.^. e • ^- ^ i_
dition of intimate observation
with the most modern study of the effects of light. He is,.
par excellence, the artist of intimate emotion, which, however^
'v& not the same thing as being a genre painter. Painters who-
represent domestic scenes in rooms after the fashion of genre
are to be found in every school; but few there are since
Chardin who have portrayed faithfully and without affectation
and banality the poetry of family life. For this something
more than mere dexterity \s wanting ; the whole spirit of the
artist must be in his work, and art and life must be fused in to-
each other. Johansen creates the feeling that he really believes
in what he is doing. Not only is he an artist with a rare
capacity for pictorial expression, but he is also a delicate and
sensitive spirit His pictures have been lived and seen, and are
not merely the result of design and skilful make. For him«
there is a charm in the fine, curling cloud of steam escaping
from the tea-kettle, something delightful in the unity of the
family gathered round the table, something cordial in the
bubbling water and the fire crackling in the stove. Were a
Frenchman to handle such themes one would be lost in ad-
miration of the finely studied effects of light. But Johansen's
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DENMARK
321
works are like a
moment of life
itself, like the
memory of some-
thing dear and
familiar appealing
to the heart in
plain accents.
In one of his
pictures in the
Copenhagen Ex-
hibition he repre-
sented a cosy
room, with spread-
ing, leafy plants,
copper plates,
flower - stands, a
cottage - piano, a
round table, and
JOHANSEN
\,1 lU^€ plUfiO,
"The Morning Sleep."
an old-fashioned sofa, where six Danish painters were comfortably
seated together. The subdued light of the lamp fell upon their
persons, leaving the rest of the room in faint obscurity. There
is not a Dutch " little master " who could have more accurately
rendered the reflections of the lamplight playing upon bottles
and glasses, and not one who could have better attained the refine-
ments of physiognomy which are in this work. In the way in
which they sit talking and listening to the conversation, the
figures have an intense vividness such as Impressionism first
gave the secret of arresting in its direct, momentary effect.
Johansen introduced himself into Germany for the first time, in
1890, with one of those supper-pieces so characteristic of Danish
painting. The men in their old-fashioned smart coats, and the
women with their provincial, overladen toilettes, are grouped in
the drawing-room after supper, listening to a stout gentleman at
the piano, who is obliging the company with a song. They are
none of them taking pains to be brilliant, but seem quite at
home in the picture, being simple, reflective, and rather limited
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MODERN PAINTING
Johansen: "At the Piano."
in their mental horizon. And that mild, warm air, somewhat
impregnated with tobacco, that air in which Johansen so much
delights, circulates in the room, a soft veil of reddish-grey dusk,
from which the figures detach themselves slowly.
Domestic life, the quiet comfort of the Danish home, has
found its representative in Johansen, who has glorified every-
thing with the magic of his poetry : the familiar talks beneath
the lamp in the long winter evening, the little events of the
day, children getting up and going to bed, and their games
or their work beneath their mother's eyes. It is Saturday
evening. In the old wooden bath the water is steaming, and
the tiled stove is glowing as if it must burst, so that the little
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DENMARK
323
Johamsen: a Landscape.
ones cannot catch cold when they have had their bath. Or
boys and girls have both put on their Sunday finery betimes,
and march into their grandmother's room, where she is lying
in bed, not from being ill, but because it is the warmest
place in which to celebrate her birthday. Again, it is dusk,
and the glimmering coals in the oven alone light up the pleasant
room where a young mother is just beginning to tell stories.
And four great, shining, childish eyes look up at her full of
inquiry.
But this same master who has created these unadorned and
intimate interiors, which have been felt with such manly tender-
ness, is, at the same time, one of the finest landscape-painters
in Denmark. With marvellous finish Johansen can paint the
silvery air of the little island country, where autumn is so
mild and the sunlight so soft — the vaporous atmosphere which,
like a light veil of gauze, tones down all contours and rounds
all lines ; and yet here, too, the highest art has been resolved
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into simple nature, so that one has no sense of beholding a
picture, but can feel the poetry of the landscape, with its melan-
choly, its solitude, and its mysterious stillness. Perhaps the
picture is one of a peasant cot, standing lonely in the sunshine,
upon the wide green meadow, and surrounded by the warm
blue autumn evening. In front there graze a couple of cows,
one seeming to sleep as it stands, the other chewing the cud.
And from the whole picture there escapes that half-somnolent
sense of reverie that overcomes one upon a warm summer
evening. Or there are a couple of men, thorough Danes of
the country parts, with great red beards and meditative eyes,
sauntering along a village path, whidh leads past a wooden
fence to a small creek. The sun is going down, the mists from
land and sea rise like a silvery veil over the landscape, the
air is still and not a leaf stirring, but the wooden shoes of the
men grate upon the sand.
In this delicate and moving feeling for nature, Johansen's
art is, as it were, the expression of the collective efforts of the
younger Danes. As a painter of interiors and of landscapes,
he unites both the leading tendencies which others represent
separately : some confine themselves by preference to the country
and the coast, amid the people and amid nature, whence
they have themselves proceeded, whereas others with unusual
pictorial softness of effect give expression to the genial life of the
bourgeoisie in Copenhagen. Holsoe delights in painting interiors
in the dusk, and transparent light falling through the leafy,
spreading plants on to the broad windows, and greenish-white
twilight hovering in the room, where are green velvet sofas»
shining mahogany furniture, pianos, brackets, and quiet girls
reading letters at the window or playing the piano by candle-
light. Carl Thomsen, H. N'. Hansen, Otto Haslund, Irtninger,
Engelstedy have all set themselves free from those trivial drolleries
into which genre painting degenerated with Helsted. Johansen
caused them to reflect that a genre picture should not be a piquant
little story narrated with more or less spirit, but a fragment of
household life simply rendered. The figures which fill their
plain, sympathetic pictures are those of people with graceful,
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DENMARK 325
indolent, careless, and gentle movements, sitting opposite
each other thoughtfully, and lost in silence ; solitary women
gazing in the evening with longing across the brown heath ; old
people with the look of being alienated from the world, with
the air of having sat in little rooms day after day forgotten of
everybody ; girls of a still and touching beauty, reading stories
in the corner by the stove, dreaming in an arbour, or accompany-
ing their sad songs on the piano. Thoroughly Danish and
sombre is Lauritz Ringy who has painted good pictures from
peasant life. Erik Henningsen^ who has executed — rather in the
style of Jean B^raud — animated street-scenes, arrests, popular
merry-makings, and the like, is a little superficial and vulgar in
the French sense. A tinge of sadness, such as runs through
Danish novels, underlies a deathbed scene by Fritz Sybergy who
has felt the influence of that tough and knotty master of
characterization Zahrtmann. In Copenhagen this school of
Zahrtmann forms a little circle of its own and seems to have
beneficial elements for the future.
The resort of the painters of the sea and of fishers is Skagen,
the little fishing village at the extreme end of Jutland. The
pioneers of the new renaissance came into touch at once with
pletn air and the life of the people in this Danish Dachau ; here
they learnt to love the wide strand and the melancholy dunes,
and the harmony of the cold, bright light, and here have they
studied the customs of the dwellers on the shores, their rude
physiognomy, and the strong, healthy poetry of their life, so full
of changes. Michael Anchcr and his wife discovered Skagen
in the interests of Danish painting.
According to the portrait which her husband has painted of
her, Mrs. Anna Ancher is a pretty little woman of thirty. She
was born in Skagen, and there on the strand near her native
village she learnt to see nature, and afterwards worked from
1875 to 1878 under Kyhn in Copenhagen. Since then she has
settled with her husband in Skagen, far off at the world's end.
There is no need for giving the titles of pictures by Madame
Ancher. " A Mother with her Child " was her first charming idyll.
Then followed a picture " Coffee is Ready." It is afternoon : an
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326 MODERN PAINTING
old fisher is resting on the bench by the stove, and a young woman
wakes him gently. After this work Madame Ancher delighted
the public every year by some charming picture, in which an ener-
getic grasp of fact was combined with sympathetic feminine
insight for men and things. The Copenhagen Gallery possesses a
funeral scene by her. The coffin hung with green wreaths, the
room with its red-stained walls, and the people standing around
with so serious an air, how simple it all is, and at the same time
how plain and homely! At the Munich Exhibition of 1892 she
was represented by a study, " Morning Sunlight : " a room with
walls stained blue, and bright sunbeams pouring in through
the window and playing, as though they were a light shower of
gold, upon the walls, the yellow planks, and the blond hair of a
girl. All her pictures are works softly tender and full of fresh
light But the execution is downright and virile. It is only in
little touches, in fine and delicate traits of observation which
would probably have escaped a man, that these paintings are
recognized to be the works of a feminine artist.
Michael Ancher is ten years older than his wife. Peculiarly
is he the painter of the race of large-boned and rough-grained
fishers who on the northern coast of the island kingdom extort
a meagre livelihood from the sea by hard toil. "Fishers
watching a Ship sailing by in a Storm" was the title of the
first large picture with which he made his appearance in 1876.
Upon a sea-dune falling abruptly, a number of fishers have
gathered to mark the vessel, scourged by the gale out at sea.
Some of them, dressed only in oilskin trousers and woollen
jersey, stand upright, their great outlines standing sharply defined
against the gloomy sky, which is swept by heavy black clouds ;
others have lain down upon the soft drifts of sand. The colour
is still rather poor and sober; but the conception of nature,
sincere, impressively simple, and almost ascetically energetic,,
already announced the forceful master who stands forth to-day
as the Ulysse Butin of Denmark, a distant kinsman of those
strong-handed, honest, and simple painters of the proletariat
who gather round Alfred Roll in Paris. Michael Ancher knows
the sea and that toil of fishermen which tans the face and
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DENMARK
327
Anna Ancher: "A Funeral."
ITtllge photo.
makes the hands hard, and in his pictures he renders it with
the plainness of an old seaman. With him all is clear,
precise, and as matter-of-fact as open daylight. His broad
plebeian treatment, which courts no pictorial graces, but repre-
sents the fact sincerely and in accordance with reality, suits his
coarse-handed, raw-boned subjects. Ancher*s men are actual
fishermen ; every figure has an extraordinary intensity of life,
and the atmospheric mood is always true and unforced ; every-
thing manufactured and suggestive of the tableau is avoided in
his composition throughout. Here is a lay-preacher upon the
strand hemmed in by a throng of pious listeners, and there,
of a Sunday evening, a pair of fishers are making their way
home across the dunes. Here a heavy boat for carrying
freightage is being dragged over the sand by sturdy nags, and
there another shoots through the murky green tide landwards,
rowed by three men in oilskin ; and there, again, are weather-
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UiUg9 photo
Michael Ancher: ''Fishers watching a Ship sailing by in a Storm."
beaten seamen, lolling upon the shore in heavy, dirty weather,
debating the destiny of a ship labouring by at sea. Even
when he renders, as he docs at times, the familiar events in
the household life of Skagen fishermen, his art retains its
rude and earnest note. His " Boys' School in Skagen " was,
for example, the very opposite of a genre picture by Emanuel
Spitzer : there was no medley of good and naughty boys
practising jokes on a comic schoolmaster. The old man sitting
at the desk in his shirt-sleeves, with large spectacles, is a
Northern giant who does not allow joking, and there is some-
thing downcast and resigned about the children. Life amid this
earnest landscape, and between the blank whitewashed walls of
this schoolroom flooded with the hard Northern daylight, has
made them staid and serious.
Beside Ancher, Locher is the principal painter of the sea.
It was a bold stroke to name a waste of sea " January," as he
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DENMARK 329
did in a picture at the Munich Exhibition of 1890; and yet
one really felt the cold, wintry sunshine in this seascape, where
everything was bright, fluid, and transparent In the works of
Thorolf Pedersetiy also, the sea is usually an earnest and sombre
element Nothing is to be seen in his pictures except the sea
and the sky — not a boat, nor a bird. Long, vaporous strips
of cloud shift on the leaden-grey firmament, and the silvery
blue transparent sea rolls out in long billows, plunging against
one another monotonously to the far horizon, and in the fore-
ground streaming wearily over the level bluish-yellow sand and
the pale green oat-tufts of the dunes. Whereas in the pictures
of the Belgian marine-painters the sea gleams in all colours of
the rainbow, laughs coquettishly, or gives curtain-lectures like a
pretty woman, the Danes paint the sea in its limitless and
desolate solitude.
And this same melancholy trait is peculiar to the majority
of Danish landscapes. Pictures like those of Viggo Pedersen,
who, amongst all the younger Danes, is most in harmony with
the latest Frenchmen, and sometimes, in his rainbow pictures,
with Rubens also, are in their fine, clear harmonies and their
bright, laughing notes less characteristic of the Danish sentiment
for nature. Moreover his field of work was not so much
Denmark as Italy. He lingered long in Paris, and then in
Rome and Sora di Campagna, and learnt there to see nature
with the eyes of the most modern Impressionists. Otherwise the
painting of Italy is under an interdict amongst the living
Danes, as is well known ; yet men like Pedersen are able to
bring it into honour once more. His pictures have been seen
in such an interesting way that they mirror the landscape of
Italy in an entirely different fashion from that which may be
seen in the arid, motley, and unpictorial productions of the
generation which is vanishing. They have no majestic mountain
lines, but combine the grey landscape, the pale green of the
olives, and the tender blue of the sky with the silvery lii;ht
which pervades everything — combine them in absolutely charm-
ing concords, vibrating through the whole atmosphere in delicate
gradations.
VOL. III. 22
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330 MODERN PAINTING
The same is more or less true of Philipseris Italian pictures :
he is, likewise, one of the most eminent of the modern plein-air
artists, a landscapist of note, and an excellent painter of animals ;
as such he has taken his motives of late years from the islands
Saltholm and Amager, near Copenhagen. In no way is he behind
the generation born ten years later ; on the contrary he has gone
in advance of it and levelled the way. Thorwald Niss may also
be considered as a path-finder in the Danish art of landscape,,
although his work is characteristic of a somewhat earlier stage
than Philipsen's. Beside powerful seascapes he takes delight in
painting the moods of the forest in autumn, and has a broad and
a luxuriant brush. Together with Zacho and Gotfred Christensen^
the gifted painter of the Jutland fjords, he has long exercised
an unquestionable influence on Danish painting of landscape,
leading it to adopt a more forcible scheme of colour than it had
in earlier days.
Otherwise there rests over the works of the younger group of
Danish landscapists all the still, absorbed melancholy natural
to the Danish soil. The charm of Danish scenery does not
consist in splendid colour and large contours. All the lines are
gradual in their curves, soft in all their forms, and without great
changes or surprises. Even in the beautiful woodlands round
Copenhagen the huge beeches are so harmoniously rounded that
they leave the impression of suavity rather than of strength. In
a certain sense Danish nature corresponds with the Danish tongue,
which is just as mild, as discreet, as delicate, and as free of
emphasis as the outlines of the country. The Dane does not give
way to broad laughter, but only to a smile ; he knows nothing of
wild life, but has the sense of quiet enjoyment. Noisy demeanour
he would regard as vulgarity. Indeed in the great pleasure-
gardens of Tivoli there are thousands of people moving with a
decorum and quietude which almost seem unnatural. There is
not a cry to be heard, and when any one talks with his neighbour
it is in an inaudible whisper. Everywhere conversation is carried
on in a whisper — in the street, the public promenades, the res-
taurants. And so the Danish landscape whispers to you and
cannot cry aloud, smiles and will not laugh. It has nothing
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DENMARK 33 ►
savage, nor rugged, nor indeed too large, no brusque transitions,,
no sudden interruptions, but only wide plains with indeterminate,
vanishing, almost intangible lines, soft rolling country that ceases-
imperceptibly at the shore of the sea or embraces still forest meres
with gentle declivities. Except in Jutland, there are no really
austere, rough, and virgin districts, for everything is subdued,,
lonely, and peaceful. Sometimes the tourist catches sight of a
humble cottage painted white, with a thatched roof glancing in.
the sunlight or showing itself with a tender bluish glimmer in the
dusk. 'The atmosphere of Holland is damp and misty, but in
Denmark it is fresh and cool ; the vegetation in one country is
rich and luxuriant, in the other of a soft, subdued, and rather
pallid green. The very sunrise and sunset are not, as in Norway,,
gorgeous and opulent in effect, but indecisive, soothing, mysterious.
And the artist surrounded by nature in this humour easily
becomes meditative and dreamy ; his pictures receive the same
subdued and but faintly rhythmical character. As a matter of
fact, a tinge of that gentle melancholy recalling Cazin rests upon
the majority of Danish pictures. It is not reminiscence or
plagiarism, but a natural affinity of spirit with the painter who-
in France rendered best the character of Northern plains, their
. moist, soft nature, the fading blue and the grey of tender night,,
everything that is quiet, still, and veiled. Faint colours, mist and
sadness, grey weather, storm and rainy air, a short spring which
is almost winter, with fine yellowish verdure which looks as though
it were still budding, such is the character of Danish landscape,
the ground-tone which goes, tender and discreet, through the
pictures of the younger Danes. Each one of them is an in-
dividuality, and yet in all they do there is this same soft, melting
trait, and this same low and yearning burden. Each one of them
looks at nature with his own* eyes, but all their works invariably
bear this same scrupulously exact mark of kinship ; one recog-
nizes at once that these pictures are from the same little native
land, the same quiet corner hidden between the hills.
Julius Paulsen may be regarded as one of the best repre-
sentatives of this painting of "mood" in the landscapes of the
younger generation. It is not possible to characterize his
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MODERN PAINTING
Paulsen: "Adam and Eve/
L TUlg9 photo.
pictures with any of the current phrases, nor to describe
them by the stringing together of words, but one becomes
absorbed in them when one meets them in exhibitions, because
they have such depth, a dreamy depth which does not clamour
for recognition, but reveals itself by degrees. Peasants' houses,
with wild vines gleaming red and green, rest beneath soft
spreading beech-trees, while the shadows creep slowly along
the walls. In the sky a faint moon casts a tremulous
band of silver upon the grey-green meadows, upon the still
vessels in the harbour, upon the wan shores lying in the
vaporous bluish dusk. Evening draws on. The leaves seem
asleep upon the trees, and nothing stirs except the lady-birds
«pon the nettles, and a few shrivelled leaves upon the grass,
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333
Mnnich : Hanfstangl.}
Peterson Mols : ** October.'
contracting slightly beneath the rays of the setting sun. Or
there is rain, a dull October evening, when the damp mist
clings to the brown boughs. Often he does not paint actual
things at all, but only their reflection : lonely forest meres
imaging the forms and colours of nature in uncertain, rippling,
tremulous outlines. And this same man, who is one of the
most various artists in Denmark, renders in his portraits,
charged as they are with character, the peculiarities of a head
no less well than he seizes the secret of a phase of nature in
his landscapes. This same man is in Denmark, the land of
shame-faced prudery, one of the few who occasionally venture
upon painting the nude. One recalls his picture "The Waiting
Models," and particularly his " Adam and Eve," those two nude
figures in the misty shades of the forest : Adam stretching
his limbs as he wakes from a dull slumber, and Eve standing
in her dazzling beauty, and looking down upon him with a
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334 MODERN PAINTING
Tialf-sensuous, half-disdainful glance. For the present Paulsen
would seem to have reached a climax in his " Cain," that
expressive figure turning over in pain before the eye of God —
one of the most eminent performances of the young Danes.
Knowledge of these men may be most readily acquired in
Copenhagen at " The Free Exhibition," as it is called, a rival
of the official Salon near Charlottenborg. This Art Union was
founded in 1891 by some of the youngest painters, with whom
were joined, in addition to Zahrtmann, Philipsen, Engelsted,
Viggo Pedersen, and Paulsen, the brothers Joachim and Niels
Skovgaardy sons of that admirable landscape-painter Peter
Christian Skovgaard, and both born artists. They began as
landscape-painters, influenced by their father, and executed
pictures in which the naturalistic traditions of the old Danish
art were continued. After that they were both in Italy, and
brought from thence beautiful Italian landscapes and charming
pictures of the life of the people. Moreover they visited Greece,
where they made pictorial studies after antique architecture ; and
thus they have both abundantly studied ancient art upon classic
ground. After their return they fell once more to painting
naturalistic landscapes, and paint them still, deriving their
motives more especially from Halland in the south of Sweden.
But incidentally they are following more and more a decorative
style, novel in the history of Danish painting. Experiments in
pottery which they have made together with many other artists,
such as the gifted T/ieodor Bindesboll, awakened their feeling for
the charm of simple mediums, and, in particular, the elder
brother Joachim Skovgaard has since then aimed more often
at decorative than at naturalistic effects in his figure-pieces.
Several of his biblical compositions have made a considerable
sensation — for instance, "The Angel at the Pool of Bethesda,"
a picture in which the rushing movement of masses achieved
a peculiarly telling effect. In " Christ as the Warder of Paradise"
he showed the influence of the early Italian Renaissance, more
or less indeed of Gozzoli, though without a trace of actual
imitation. And the landscape especially, with the majestic
walls of Paradise, bore witness to a rare power of invention.
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DENMARK 335
Both he and his younger brother have drawn many illustrations,
amongst which Niels Skovgaard*s drawings to the old Danish
ballads are particularly worthy of note, and show an admirable
sense of style. Both these artists are characteristic of the
fermentation which has taken place in the Danish art of recent
years, for which the "Free Exhibition" has become the inde-
pendent stage. An anti-naturalistic movement is to be clearly
traced in all directions, and receives new adherents every year.
The attack is made in various ways, but all have the same
object in view : the attainment of a larger method of conception
than that of the older Danish painters of the naturalistic school
Everywhere they seek the means for carrying out this new
style. Skovgaard is under the influence of the Italians, others
under that of the most modern French, and even an artist
like Viggo Pedersen, who would appear to stand so much apart,
seems bent on breaking with his earlier manner.
A dozen years ago plein-air painting was the Alpha and
Omega of young Danish artists, but amongst the youngest it
has already lost its authority. They hold that art has greater
aims than that of approaching nature as closely as possible, and
they admit other subjects than those of the naturalists. After
Niels Skovgaard and the veteran Lorens Frohlich — one of the
most gifted illustrators of the present, whose children's books
are familiar throughout the world — had illustrated the old Danish
ballads in their drawings, Mrs, Agnes Slott^Moller for the first
time attempted to treat them in painting, and she has shown
in her pictures an exceedingly modern comprehension of the
old legends. Her husband, Harold Slott-MoUer, is a man of
eminent talent as a colourist, and his pictures, "The Doctor's
Waiting-Room " and the " Portrait of my Wife," early assured
him a place amongst promising artists of the younger genera-
tion. Later he turned to decorative painting, though without
achieving in it anything so deservedly successful as the two
works which have been named. But the most singular amongst
all who appear in " The Free Exhibition " is /. F. WtUumsen,
^ho seems to be gaining the importance of an initiator in
Danish art. He too — though he is little more than thirty —
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336 MODERN PAINTING
began as a naturalistic painter, and at first modelled himself
upon Viggo Johansen. A journey to Paris, where he now lives,
gave him new impulses. From the most modern French artists
he borrowed many a mysterious formula, but they had no power
to kill his own strong and peculiar personality. Willumsen is-
still in the experimental stage; he works in all mediums — paints
and carves in wood, etches, and makes attempts in terra-cotta.
And in all that he does there is the effort to be simple, and to-
create an art which, in opposition to Naturalism, shall be purely
suggestive in effect
Another man of singular temperament is F. Hamnurshoyy
a very refined artist in the matter of tone-values, one who
envelops everything in a soft grey-brown and sheds around his
figures a mysterious, transparent gloom. Like Whistler, he is
hyper-sensitive in colour. In one of his pictures a matron is
represented sitting quietly before a silver-grey wall ; in another a
large round table covered with white, and without any accessories
of still-life, stands in a silver-grey room. He has also painted
dreamy, earnest portraits, which are full of soul ; and highly
notable was his mysterious representation of "Job." Amongst
the other contributors to *'The Free Exhibition," honourable
mention must be made of Johan RoJide^ who paints beautiful
and moving landscapes from lonely regions in Jutland ; Selig-
mantiy who has an excellent talent for narration ; and Karl Jensetiy.
a refined painter of architecture. Together with some of the
younger members of the official Salon and several of the pupils of
Zahrtmann, these "Free Exhibitors" form the advance guard
of Danish art, a guard which, as it seems, will assure their
little country in the future an important voice in the European
alliance of art.
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CHAPTER XLI
SWEDEN
Previous history of Swedish art. — The Classicists : Per Krafft, Frederik
Westin, Elias Martin.— Extension of the range of subject through
Romanticism: Plageman, BlomnUr, Fahlcrantz, Wilhelm Palm,
Egron Lundgren, — Beginnings of a national painting of the life
of the people: Soedermark, Sandberg, Dahlstrom, Per Wickenberg,
Karl Wahlbom, August Lindholm, Amalia Lindegren, Nils
Andersson.—The DUsseldorfian period: Karl D' Uncker, Bengt
Nordenberg, Wilhelm Wallander, Anders Koskull, August
'fern berg, Ferdinand Eager lin. — After the Paris World Exhibition
of 1867, instead of going to DUsseldorf the Swedes repair to Paris
and Munich. — Period of costume-painting and colouring after the
old masters: Johan Kristoffer Boklund, Johan Frederik Hoeckert,
Marten Eskil Winge, August Malmstrdm, Georg von Rosen, Julius
Kronberg, Carl Gustav Hellquist, Gustav Cederstrom, Nils Forsberg.
— The landscape-painters: Marcus Larsson, Alfred Wahlberg,
G, Rydberg, Edvard Bergh,— After the Paris World Exhibition of
1878 the last transition y which led the young Swedish artists to follow
the lines of Impressionism, took place. — The Parisian Swedes : Hugo
Salmson, August Hagborg, Vilhelm van Gegerfelt, Karl Sk&nberg,
Hugo Birger. — Those who returned home became the founders of a
new national Swedish art. — Character of this art compared with
the Danish. — The landscape-painters : Per Eckstrom, Nils Kreuger,
Karl Nordstrom, Prince Eugene, Robert ThegerstrOm, Olof Arbor elius,
Axel Lindmann, Alfred Ihdrne, John Kindborg, Johan Krouthin,
Adolf Nordling, Johan Ericson, Edvard Rosenberg, Ernst
Lundstrdm, — The painters of animals : Wennerberg, Brandelius,
Georg Arsenius, Bruno Liljefors. — The figure-painters: Axel
Kulle, A If Wallander, Axel Borg, Johan Tirin, Allan Oesterlind^
Oscar Bj&rck, Carl Lars son, Ernst Josephson, Georg Pauli^
Richard Bergh, Anders Zorn.
SWEDEN is a land of more fashionable tastes than Denmark,
and with a more decided leaning towards France. In
Copenhagen cordiality and provincial simplicity are in the
ascendant ; in Stockholm frivolity and brilliancy, greater luxury.
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338 MODERN PAINTING
■elegance of toilette, refined and graceful social life. In Denmark
one finds an island of silence, a land of idylls, where nothing ever
happens. The inhabitants are thoughtful, dreamy, bourgeois.
They talk with a soft voice and in a low key. But the Swedes
are children of the great world, always slender, elastic, and mobile
in their pilgrimage through life. Their language rings bright and
•emphatic ; it is the French of the North. All their sympathies
are proper to France. And they are the Parisians of the North
in their art also.
Where it is genuine, Danish painting has something provincial,
familiar, homely. The new technique is only a medium by which
painters give expression to their delicate, discreet observation, and
their subdued and tender feelings. Like the old Dutch masters
Pieter de Hoogh and Van der Meer, they paint pleasant and
-comfortable chambers, with old sofas and slowly striking clocks,
and the soft atmosphere of the sitting-room, and the dim light of
the lamp. The husband sits with his book at the table, the
-children are doing their exercises, the girls are playing the piano
and singing, and the coals glimmer in the little iron stove.
But Swedish painting is like a polished man of the world who
has travelled much. It is more elegant and gleaming, more
subtile and sensuous, more capricious and experimental. The
young Stockholm painters who went to Paris chiefly sought to
become adepts in technique, and addressed themselves with
astonishing boldness to the most novel problems in open-air
painting. They have not the loving tenderness, the touching
sentiment of home peculiar to the Danes, but are less characteristic
and more cosmopolitan. Yet they march in the advance guard
of modernity beside the most subtile Parisians. Both in their
colour and their subjects there is a more fluent and supple magic,
a graceful and nervously vibrating sweep which takes the eye
captive. They are French in their alluring method ; they have a
longer tradition in art than have the Danes, and are more fully
citizens of the world.
Whereas the Danish painters rarely left their little country
before the middle of the present century, the Swedes took their
part in the history of European art even in the eighteenth century.
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SWEDEN 339
In those days a number of enterprising artists, with the love of
travel in their blood, settled down abroad, divided their time
between different courts, and finally abided where they had the
greatest success. Hedlinger was famous as an engraver ; Georg
de Maries is well known to students of the history of Bavarian
art ; Meytens painted in Berlin ; Gustav Lundberg was valued as
a painter of pastels in Paris ; Hillestroni^ a pupil of Boucher, is
mentioned with praise in Diderot's notices of the Salon for his
•** Triumph of Galatea ; " Lafrensen^ known as Lavreince in France*
occupies an important place in the history of the French Rococo
period. More than one became a member of the French Academy
and bore the title Peintre du Rot, Amongst them all the artist
possessed of most virti\osity was Alexander Roslin, who went
<t2s\y abroad, dividing his time between the courts of Baireuth,
Parma, and Paris, where he was immediately elected to the
Academy, and in several competitions even triumphed over
-Greuze. He had the art of arranging his pictures of ceremonies,
and his solemn state canvases, with great aplomb ; of these the
Stockholm collection possesses the great gala portrait of Marie
Antoinette and the group of Gustav III. and his brothers. The
faces, indeed, are occasionally lifeless. But with all the more
virtuosity could he reproduce the mingled sheen of silks and
velvet, embroidery and golden ornaments, so that a verse was
-current in Paris :
** Qui a figure de satin
Doit bien itre peint far Roslin.**
He built a princely house there, and is said to have left behind
him a fortune of eight hundred thousand francs.
The period of Classicism was chiefly represented by certain
sculptors, and whoever delights in Thorwaldsen in Copenhagen
should not withhold his admiration from the Swedes, Erik Gustav
Gothe, Johan Nikolas Bystrom, and, more particularly, their
teacher Johan Tobias Sei^el, who was seventeen years senior
to Canova and thirty years senior to Thorwaldsen ; he was
in Stockholm the real founder of the classical plastic art, and
for this reason alone deserves a more important place in the
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340 MODERN PAINTING
general history of art than has, as a rule, been yet accorded
to him.
In the province of painting the transition from the eighteenth
to the nineteenth century was, as elsewhere, a period of decline.
On the exertions made earlier there followed debility, and a
stiff and monotonous school of painting. The animated colour-
ing of the age of Gustav grew pallid, and the ascetic colouring
of David threw its grey shadow even into Sweden. Priam
before Achilles, Adonis between Diana and Venus, Endymion,
and Phaedra and Electra, took possession of all canvases even
in the North. The artist most prolific in preparing such ideal
figures was Per Krafft, who, having acquired in the beginning
of the century a severe style of drawing and indifferent
colouring under David, made an imposing effect in his native
country on the score of his "grand style." Frederik Westin,
the academician incarnate, who could not conceive any picture
which had not yellowish-brown, leather-coloured bodies, goes
upon lines more or less parallel with Gerard and Girodet, to
whose suave ornamentation he gave a barbaric turn, though he
has also executed shiny portraits in the style of Josef Stieler.
The gospel of stiff, Classical landscape-painting was announced
by Elias Martin, And if the portrait-painter Karl Frederik
von Breda is painter in a far higher degree, he owes this to
having worked for a long time under Reynolds and Lawrence,
to whose principles he adhered to the end of his life.
Here, as elsewhere. Romanticism extended the range of
subject, and led to a restoration in the matter of colour. Artists
sought to put life into the Northern mythology ; they set landscape
free from the Classical scheme, attempted to give their work a
religious tinge like the Nazarenes, or hurried through Italy and
the East in search of pictorial themes.
The Swedish Nazarene was Karl Plageman, A dreamy
man, with large visionary eyes, he lived by emotion, and in
Italy, which became his home from 183 1, he was to such a degree
intoxicated with the mysticism of Catholic churches, and the
splendour of altar-pieces, that from sheer reverence for the old
masters he never succeeded in producing anything that he could
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SWEDEN 341
really call his own. *• The dead," said he, " have kindled my
emotions, and it is the dead who shall be my teachers." Like
Overbeck, he reckoned the period from Cimabue to Perugino
as the flourishing age of art, and, indeed, his religious pictures
are by no means inept imitations of the old models.
Nils Johan Blommir stands to Plageman as Schwind to
Overbeck. Since he died, as early as 1853, ^^ the age of six-
and-thirty, he has left but few pictures to bear witness to his
dreamy spirit and his wealth of feeling, but, like those of Schwind,
they are certain of immortality. Blommdr's works proceeded
from a soft, poetic, and thoroughly Northern sentiment. "The
chief thing in a work of art,'* he writes, "is soul. I want to
represent what lives in the poetry of our people, all the figures
which belong neither to definite ages nor definite poets, but
rather constitute the natural expression of our nation, standing,
as such, in the closest union with the character of our Swedish
race." So, like Schwind, he peopled the landscape of his native
country with the creatures of Northern folk-songs. But he had
not the strength to find the cogent form for the misty visions
of his imagination, or to give new bodies to the figures of the
Northern sagas, which had never yet been represented. And
in this he resembled the contemporary sculptor Fogelberg. But
it is an evidence of fine tact that he did not follow Fogelberg
in merely reproducing the antique, but attempted a more romantic
treatment of these myths in the style of the Midsummer Nights
Dreamy in the style of Cranach, Francia, or the old Umbrians ;
and in this way he preserved the childlike spirit which is in the
youthful visions of the Northern nationalities. Like Schwind
again, Blomm^r had a thoughtful, meditative, artistic temperament
to which everything dramatic and violent was alien. Even when he
handled the myths of the gods, the gloomy fancies of the Northern
sagas made no appeal to his mild and yielding disposition. It
was not with the mighty Thor that he was occupied, not with
the tempest raging across the sea, nor with the desolation of
great and wild mountains. But in Freia and Sigyn he glorified
love and beauty, the devotion and patience of woman, as Schwind
4id in Aschenbrodel and " The Faithful Sister," and pictures
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342 MODERN PAINTING
like "The Youth and the Elves" or "Neckan's Sport with the
Mermaids ** echo so tenderly the simple, cordial tone of the old
folk-song that for the sake of this touching and homely charm,
the inadequate and nugatory painting is forgotten.
The Swedish Lessing was Karl Johan Fahkrantz, As a land-
scapist he gave typical expression to the enthusiasm for nature
introduced by Romanticism, and rendered in an exaggerated
fashion its glory and splendour or its minatory gloom, the
melancholy sadness of the Northern winter or the peaceful
mildness of the spring. At times hie displays valleys with old
oaks, between which the light falls in broad bands upon the
soft grass, at times steel-blue lakes in a clear golden atmosphere
and with vessels whose sails gleam in all the hues of the prism^
at times shadowy groves and rocky dunes overgrown with huge
immemorial trees. Fahlcrantz idealized nature, intensified effects-
of light, and arranged fragments of Ruysdael and Everdingen
in fantastic compositions. Under his hands the Stockholm Park
is populated with fabulous animals and deep hollows, which
give it the appearance of a "Wolf's Glen." His trees are of
an undetermined species, his sky rosy, his colours warm and
toned to an excessively dark shade. Yet, at times, when he
forgot the necessity for a most arbitrary romantic exaggera-
tion, his pictures have really a dreamy poetry, and fully
render the sentiment intended by the painter.
Gustav Wilhelni Palm^ in his later years called Palma
Vecchio^ might be most readily compared with the French
Michallon or with Paul Flandrin. Italy was almost exclusively
his field of study. To a strained method of composition and
arrangement he united a certain realistic capacity for painting
detail, which did not solely aim at representing " the tree in itself"
after the fashion of the Classicists proper, but differentiated the
character of vegetation with scientific accuracy. His olives,
pines, flowers, and grasses are painted thoroughly with a fine
brush and are true to botany ; and thus, fifty years ago, they
enjoyed a fame which it is now difficult to understand. And
this careful, loving regard for nature, scrupulous to the point
of Philistinism though it was, in combination with a harsh,.
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SWEDEN 345
motley scale of colour, which was nevertheless selected with an
eye to truth, was still peculiar to him when, after an absence of
sixteen years, he returned home, and, besides Italian motives,,
sometimes painted little Northern landscapes, architectural frag-
ments from the old Stockholm port and the cloisters of Wisby.
Egron Lundgren was the Swedish Fromentin — a cosmopolitan
who extended his field of study as far as India, an artist
spirited in improvization, and a gourmet in colour, one whose
coquettish art, like that of the Frenchman, was half an affair
of reality, half of mannerism. His pictures of the life of the
Italian people, such as the ** Corpus Domini Procession " of
1847, might, with their piquant effects of colour, have been
painted by the side of Decamp. But his peculiar province he
first discovered when he came to Barcelona and was there
attracted by the life of the Spanish people. His aquarelles
from Spain — he was a member of the Society of Painters in
Water-Colours — are exceedingly spirited fantasies, which have
always the air of lightness and improvization. As he had the
secret of giving the sentiment of a landscape with a few strokes,,
so he could catch the character and movement of a figure
with an impressionistic aptitude. A highly bred and wealthy
man, he made London his headquarters throughout his life,
turning up sometimes in Italy, sometimes in Spain or India,,
upon pilgrimages of study.
National and domestic life was turned to account as gradu^
ally and diffidently in Swedish art as in that of other countries.
Here also it was military painting that made a beginning. A
few artists, who had at one time been officers, had exercised
upon the drill-ground a keener eye for the characteristic
phenomena of modern life than the professional painters had
done in the plaster-cast class of the Academy ; and they were
the first to draw, with a plain and dry realism, scenes from the
world of soldiers or comic anecdotes dealing with the people.
Some of them, like Wetterling and Moemer, did not get beyond
the stage of dilettantism. On the other hand, Olof Soedemiarky
who pursued his studies in Munich and Rome, reached a
creditable level. The pictures from Swedish history — battles
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344 MODERN PAINTING
and parades, the victories of Carl Johan and the doings of
Bernadotte — which these men painted in concert in the Castle
of Stockholm, are rather military bulletins than works of art,
and stand, artistically considered, more or less on an equality
with the battle-pieces with which Peter Hess and Albrecht
Adam embellished the Castle at Munich : Soedermark, however,
displayed real merits in a series of excellent portraits — those, for
instance, of Frederika Bremen and Jenny Lind — and his portraits
drove out the classic wax dolls of Westin, which had been
hitherto in favour.
Two others, Johan Gustav Sandberg and K, A. Dahlstrom,
who also contributed to the cycle of battle-pieces and historical
pictures, in the further course of their labours went from the
uniform to the peasant's blouse. Their works, like those of old
Meyerheim, are not so much pictures of peasants as costume-
pictures. Sandberg especially was occupied far less frequently
witji human beings than with their Sunday clothes, and confined
himself — when, for example, he painted the unveiling of • the
statue to Gustav Vasa — simply to a coloured memorandum of
all the Swedish provincial costumes from Skouen to Lapland.
Dahlstrom, who only died in 1869, seems plainer and more
animated in his pictures of children, fishermen, and beggars.
It was chiefly owing to his influence that the heroic range ot
subjects was abandoned, and that Swedish painting was made
familiar with its own period and with Swedish people.
Per Wickenberg^ who received an impulse from him, goes,
more or less, upon parallel lines with Hermann Kauffmann and
Biirkel. His misty winter landscapes, filled in with peasants or
fishermen, are good, honest works, simple, sound, and fresh,
although, like the pictures of BUrkel, they are not so much based
upon direct observation as upon a thorough study of the old
Dutch masters Isaias van der Velde and Isaak Ostade.
The Swedish Steffeck was Karl Wahlbom, He painted
peasant-pictures in the manner of Teniers, pictures from Swedish
history, and especially horses, which he placed boldly and vividly
in actual movement But the most attractive effect is produced
by Lorenz August Lindholm^ who made an intelligent study of
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SWEDEN 345
Cerard Dow and Metsu, during a long residence in Holland.
From the one he learnt his conscientious work of detail, and
from the other he gradually acquired full and vigorous colour,
his own having been brown and arid in the beginning. His
interiors are simple, quiet pictures, sympathetic in observation
and conscientious in the minuteness of the painting, the subjects
being grandmothers* birthdays, peasants smoking or playing
-cards, boys reading, or little girls holding a skein for their
mothers.
With her unpretentious representations of the joy of children,
the smiling happiness of parents, sorrow resigned, and childish
stubbornness, Amalia Lindegren attained great national popu-
larity, for without being a connoisseur it is possible to take
pleasure in the fresh children's faces in her pictures.
Nils Andersson took up the theme where Dahlstrom had
•dropped it, and carried it further with better equipment Barren^
stony hills, with low, scanty bushes, fir-woods, and desolate, snowy
landscapes form the background of his works, in which men
and animals are seen at their labours. He painted nature and
the folk of his home without humour or poetic varnish, not the
people on Sunday, but their ordinary work-a-day life. In this
unforced and natural homeliness lies his strength. The colouring
of his pictures is thin and clumsy, the execution tortured and
laborious.
Such essentially was the result of the evolution of Swedish
art up to 1850. Sweden had individual painters, but no trained
school. Sounds were to be heard, but as yet there was no full
•chime. But the ambition to do as other nations was growing
•stronger, and to attain this end systematic study abroad was a
necessity. Dusseldorf, whither the Norwegian Tidemand had
already shown the way, had a special fame, and became from
1850 the high-school for Swedish art. In 1855 no l^ss than thirty
Swedes were entered at the Dusseldorf Academy, and the
'" Northern Society " which they founded soon became a factor
in the artistic life of the place.
Yet these painters have nothing specifically Swedish. Their
art is Dusseldorf art with Swedish landscapes and costumes, and
VOL. III. 23
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346 MODERN PAINTING
thus they differ to their disadvantage from contemporary Danes,
Vermehren, Exner, and Dalsgaard based their art upon an
intimate knowledge of their own country ; the heart of the
people is throbbing there, the pulse of vigorous national life.
But Karl HUncker, Bengt Nordenberg, Wilhelm Wallanderr
Anders Koskull, Kilian Zoll, Peter Eskilson, August Jemberg,
and Ferdinand Fagerlin contented themselves with translating
Knaus and Vautier into Swedish. The Danes were tender and
cordial poets, but these men merely gave a dry course of in-
struction on habits and customs in Swedish villages. The former
rendered plain, naive, and direct fragments of everyday life ; the
latter studiously composed pictures for the best sitting-room.
Foreign patrons of art did not exact intimacy of feeling, but
understood types all the better the more general they were.
They were indifferent to the poetry of daily life in the North ^
it was only anecdote and the ethnographical element which met
with their approbation. And as the art of every country must
use its own language, and a painting of national life presupposes-
intimate union between the painter and the nation, it can only
be said that, at this period, the scales had not yet fallen from-
men's eyes.
In the matter of technique the results were likewise paltry.
All these painters were anecdotists and novel-writers. Their
compositions, indeed, are well balanced and studiously calculated.
Every figure has something special to express, and, as in Hogarth^
a multitude of small attributes serve to throw light upon each
character ; and this character, needless to say, must always be
that of a nicely brought up person, and incapable of giving
offence in the drawing-room. So wherever a little tale was told
in a pleasant, intelligible fashion adapted for the sitting-room,,
the painter's aim was attained, and the method of colour was
a matter of subsidiary importance. The painting of a portion
of nature with the mere intention of expressing a harmony of
colour was a thing which did not lie within the programme of
these painters. All their pictures are stronger in anecdote than
in painting. The drawing has no character, and the work of the
brush is amateurish. And here, as elsewhere, the same reaction*
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SWEDEN 347
took place : the fund of ideas was exhausted, and the painting
did not improve. But the Paris International Exhibition of
1867 signed the death-sentence of the old Dusseldorf school.
Through Piloty the Munich school began to influence the
handling of colours in Germany. Knaus had gone to Paris to-
acquire in that city what Dusseldorf could not give him. And
from that time Sweden likewise became conscious that the
academy on the Rhine was no longer its proper ground. In the
letters of the academy exhibitioners complaints of the antiquated
principles of teaching began to be made, and what Dusseldorf
had been for the earlier generation Paris and Munich became
for that which followed.
The reign of Karl XV. — who invariably advanced the interests
of art and artists, with thorough good-will and an open purse —
was for Swedish painting what the period from Piloty to
Makart, from Diez to Lofftz, had been for the people of
Munich. The old masters were studied, and an attempt was
made to acquire an artistic style of painting by their aid. And
as the sleights of the pallet are practised most effectively upon
the variegated costumes of the past, historical and costume-
pictures were at first placed in the foreground. By the painting
of hose, mantles, and cloaks the artist came to liberate himself
from anecdotic subject and to gain a sense of the pictorial.
The man who acted as a medium for these principles was
the Swedish Piloty, Johan Kristoffer Boklund, a pupil of the
Munich Academy and of Couture. The subjects treated in his
pictures were German, and the style of painting, which was
French, was admired by the younger generation in the same
way as Piloty's style in " Seni " was regarded with wondering^
admiration by Munich people. Boklund painted costume-
pictures: Gustavus Adolphus taking leave of Maria Eleonora,.
Doctor Faust amid globes and folios, pale choristers with censers,
antiquaries surrounded by dusty books. There were also
picturesque architectural motives from Tyrol ; he delighted in
churches, cloisters, and farms, peopling them with mercenaries^
plundering soldiers, outposts, and marauders. But in everything
he did he laboured to attain a picturesque harmony, a graceful
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348
MODERN PAINTING
L'Art,]
HoECKERT : " Divine Service in Lapland."
[Milita »c.
Style of treatment, and he exerted from 1855 a wide influence
on the younger generation as teacher at the academy.
These efforts in colouring found their most notable expression
in Johan Frederik Hoeckert. He was a genuine painter, the
first in Sweden who saw the world with the eyes of an artist
As a restless, searching spirit, never contented with himself, he
had run through all schools and beheld all countries. From
1846 he was with Boklund in Munich, from 1851 with Knaus
in Paris. In Holland a great effect upon him was made by
Rembrandt, and the letters which he wrote from Italy and
Spain are those of a real painter. Tunis, where he went in
1862, he calls the most marvellous magical kaleidoscope in the
world, and Naples an inexhaustible treasury of art both in
painted and in unpainted pictures.
And though Hoeckert has not produced much, every one of
his pictures is good. His " Divine Service in Lapland " —
eighteen men and women listening to the words of a preacher
in a bare village chapel — won the first medal at the Paris
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SWEDEN 34^
World Exhibition of 1857, and was acquired for the museum
in Lille. Some of the critics went so far as to compare him
with Delacroix. But such comparison is certainly to be
understood with considerable qualification. Hoeckert has none
of the glowing violent passion of the revolutionary ; he is a
lyric poet and no dramatist, and knows nothing of ecstasy^
nothing of tension. Nevertheless his pictures were the boldest
that had been yet painted in Sweden. The " Interior of a
Lapland Hut" — exhibited in 1857 ^"^ the Paris Salon, and
obtained for the Stockholm National Museum in 1858— in its
fine golden tone might have been painted by Ostade. Certain
of bis interiors, with their glancing sunlight, their open doors,
and the warm daylight flooding into the dim room, are evidence
of the fervent study he had made of Pieter de Hoogh. And
all the motives of genre painting are scrupulously excluded.
Hoeckert*s "golden colour" steeps everything in the sentiment
of an old-world tale. That charming costume-picture, " Bellman
in Sergei's Studio," in its full, deep tones has a dash of the
good youthful works of Roybet. And his last picture, exhibited
shortly before his death in 1866, "The Burning of the Castle
of Stockholm," was not painted as an historical document^
but only for the sake of the vivid reflections which the
blaze had cast upon the old costumes. Hoeckert, in fact^
was the first in Sweden who was neither a genre nor an
historical painter, but painter absolute. That is what assures
him an important place in the history of art.
Marten Eskil Winge attempted more than it was given
him to attain : in Swedish painting he is the man of large
figures and large canvases. Settled in Rome up to 1865, he
held in chief honour Giulio Romano, Daniele da Volterra,
Caravaggio, and other muscular Italians of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and he sought to adapt their superhuman
forms to the figures in the Northern sagas. One of these
gigantic pictures, for the preparation of which he hired the
biggest studio in Stockholm, repesents Loke and Sigyn — in
other words, a black-haired Titan a la Caravaggio and a blond
woman a la Riedel. As he portrayed in this picture love and
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3SO MODERN PAINTING
patience facing wickedness and cunning, in "Thor's Combat
with the Giants" he wished to set forth the power of light
struggling against the powers of darkness. Flashes of lightning
dart forth, while the thunder-god raging lays about him with
his battle-hammer, smiting the giants to the earth. Giulio
Romano was his model, but the result he attained was a cross
between Wiertz and Hendrih.
A further representative of this Northern tendency, August
Malmstrom, has more of a leaning towards the milder manner of
Blommdr. His very first picture, painted in Dusseldorf in 1856,
"King Heimer and Aslog" (a bardic harper with a boy in a
spring landscape), was the work of a tender, dreamy Romanticist ;
and, after a long residence in Paris under Couture, he continued
to paint such subjects, and with greater technical aptitude. His
^' Sport of the Elves " is a delicate summer-night's dream. Every-
thing in nature is still, the sky is veiled, and the horizon alone
is flooded with the glow of a warm sunset A light mist rises
from the meadow enveloping the elves, who are romping in airy
gambols. As was shown by his illustrations to the Frithjof's
Saga, made in 1868, Malmstrbm moved with great ease in the
province of Northern legend, and from these mythical pictures
he was finally led to breezy representations of the life of
children, which will probably do most to preserve his name.
The importance of Georg von Rosen lies in his bringing the
Swedes to a knowledge of the archaic finesses of Hendrik Leys,
after they had made acquaintance with Couture and Piloty.
The son of a rich man, who had an influential position in
Stockholm as the builder of the Swedish railways, Georg von
Rosen had early an opportunity of visiting all the leading
studios of the world. From Paris, where he passed his child-
hood, he went to Stockholm, and thence to Weimar and
Brussels. Even in the beginning of the sixties, when he ex-
hibited his earliest pictures—" Sten Sture's Entry in Stockholm,"
" Wine-tasting at the Monastery Gate," and " A Swedish Marriage
in the Sixteenth Century" — every one was delighted by the
refinement and authenticity of his portrayal of archaic civiliza-
tion. And after he had painted his " King Eric," under Piloty
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SWEDEN
351
Sioekkolm : Bonnur.]
Rosen : " King Eric in Prison visited by Karin Mansdotter.**
in Munich in 1870, he was made professor at the Stockholm
Academy, undertaking the direction of it after Boklund*s death
in 1 88 1.
Rosen seems very unequal in his works. "King Eric in the
Chamber of his Beloved, Karin Mansdotter," is one of the most
thorough products of the school of Piloty, and might just as
well be a representation of Egmont with Clarchen. The pendant
to it in the Copenhagen Gallery, " King Eric in Prison visited by
Karin Mansdotter," has in its tender melancholy a certain trace
-of Fritz August . Kaulbach. On the other hand, his etchings
and water-colours from the sixteenth century are entirely archaic
in the manner of Leys ; these have caught most admirably the
stiff and angular character of the period, its rude exterior and
its patriarchal cordiality, following the Bauembrueghels, Lucas
Aran Leyden, Cranach, and the German "little masters." Here
Death is embracing a girl, as in Baldung's woodcut There Faust
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MODERN PAINTING
[HanfsMngl Mio,
Rosen : Nordenskjold.
and Wagner are walking
outside the town with
the poodle making circles
round them, or Luther is
translating the Bible upon
the Wartburg. " The
Bridal Train," that makes
its way through the nar-
row alley of an old town
of the Empire, with drums
beating in the van, and
the banners of the old
guilds, and children strew-
ing flowers; "The Flower
Market" before the old
Gothic town-hall ; " Grand-
father's Birthday," with the
pretty Nuremberg girls of
gentle birth adorning the
great Renaissance table
with flowers ; " The Christmas Market," with the wedded couple
who have bought their Christmas-tree — they seem to have
stepped out of the poems of Julius Wolff — the snowy gables,
and the atmosphere fragrant with pine-needles and Christmas
cakes, — they are, one and all, winning and genuine pictures of
the "good old time." In his Eastern studies, to which he
was prompted by a journey through Egypt, Palestine, Turkey^
and Greece, he appears as a sober realist, who addresses him-
self to the motley orgies of colour known to the South with
deftness and energy ; and this realism has found its most vivid
and powerful expression in his likenesses. That of his father
reveals an old cavalier full of character such as Herkomer might
have painted ; his portrait of himself in the Florentine Ufiizi
galleries recalls Erdtelt. In his state pictures of Karl XV. and
King Oscar he avoids everything official, giving a sturdy and
honest likeness of the man. But his best portrait is probably
that of Nordenskjold, the discoverer of the North-East Passage.
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SWEDEN
353
Beneath a gloomy, clouded sky,
amid the great wastes of ice of
the Siberian Sea, gleaming white
and green, there stands a robust
masculine figure, enveloped in
dark fur, with a telescope in
his hand, gazing with keen,
earnest eyes into the distance,
which reveals to him nothing
except endless plains of ever-
Icisting ice.
In Julius Kronberg Swedish
painting does honour to its
Makart. He had learnt to
love the old Venetians in Diis-
seldorf, Paris, and Munich,
and under their guidance he
became a powerful master revel-
ling in colour. His "Nymph,"
painted in 1879 in Munich,
lying asleep by a forest pool
weary with the chase, and
there spied upon by fauns,
was a vigorous bravura piece
a la Benczur, executed with a gorgeous, brownish-red, lustrous,
bituminous painting. The voluptuous body of the red-haired
huntress rests upon a yellow drapery. Her spoils, peacocks
with metallic blue breasts and pheasants with iridescent
brownish-red plumage, lie at her feet ; luxuriant Southern
vegetation gleams around, and above there shines a strip of
deep blue Venetian sky.
Later in Rome he painted the seasons, blooming women
hastening through the air borne along by swans and accom-
panied by rejoicing Loves ; smiling they strew roses and fruits
upon the earth. The " Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King
Solomon " he worked up into a gorgeous scenical piece in the
style of Meininger. A journey to Egypt brought the beautiful
Stockholm: BoMtiur,]
Kronberg: "A Nymph."
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354 MODERN PAINTING
serpent Cleopatra to his mind, and prompted him to paint his
picture "The Death of Cleopatra," which, in its half romantic,
half classical conception, might be the work of Rochegrosse. In
the house which Kronberg built for himself, splendour of colour,
pleasure, and sportive exuberance were everywhere predominant
Like Makart, he has summoned the world of Loves and Bacchantes
into life once more; nor are they pale and bloodless, but fresh,
robust, and clothed in brilliant colours and the sumptuous beauty
of youth. As in the Viennese master, the historical subject is
merely an excuse for encompassing a great pictorial whole. And,
like Makart, he has done his best in decorative pictures. His
large ceiling-pieces in the Castle of Stockholm — an Aurora and
a Svea amid the allegorical figures of Agriculture, Industry, and
Art — are blithe and festal decorations, only distinguishable from
those of Makart through Kronberg making a gradual transition,
in accordance with the tendency of the time, from the .brown
tone of his Munich period to brighter notes of colour.
Carl Gustav Hellquist^ who was somewhat younger than the
foregoing painters, belongs altogether to German art ; he re-
ceived his training in Munich, and he lies buried by the Isar.
His melancholy fate excites compassion : he died mad just as
he was beginning to be famous. His works, which are partly
large representations from the history of Sweden and the Refor-
mation, partly genre pictures with monks like those of Griitzner,
and peasants like those of Defregger, are not such as have
interest, thoroughly able as they are. After being in the be-
ginning affected by Rosen, Piloty, and Munkacsy, Pradilla's
** Surrender of Granada" caused him in 1883 to abandon brown
bituminous painting in favour of a " modern " grey painting,
which did more justice to the illumination of objects in open
air. He likewise got the better of histrionic gesticulation. He
represents events without any design of outward brilliancy and
with the greatest possible fidelity to nature — represents them
honestly and straightforwardly, and avoids all straining after
effect. Bronzed and weather-beaten figures have supplanted
the fair regulation heads of Piloty, truth of sentiment and ex-
pression have taken the place of the traditional histrionic
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SWEDEN 355
-exaggeration. All his works result from an inflexible con-
scientiousness. But from an artistic standpoint this praise is
-equivalent to calling a man an honest fellow.
Hellquist's solidity may also be found in Gustav Cederstrdm,
likewise an exceedingly sound historical painter, who from his
soundness hardly gets the better of being tiresome. His first large
composition, which won him the second medal at the World
Exhibition of 1878, represented the "Death of Charles XII.,"
the episode of November 30th, 17 18, when the Swedish officers
carried home the body of their fallen master across the
Norwegian snowfields. Through its national subject it became
one of the most popular pictures in Sweden, and the Govern-
ment believed that they had found in CederstrOm the right man
for the loyal discharge of all state orders which might be in
question. He painted well, and to the satisfaction of his
patrons, accounts of "The Death of Nils Stur" and "The Intro-
duction of Christianity into Sweden through Saint Ansgarius."
And when he occasionally found time to execute pictures on
contemporary subjects — burial and baptism scenes, etc. — they,
too, were merely good "historical pictures" with dramatic op-
position of character and forced contrasts. Gustav Cederstrom
has, in fact, a prosy, realistic talent ; he is a reporter who avoids
nugatory phrases, commanding a firm, compact style germane
to the subject. Nevertheless his art is descriptive ; it renders
an account of the subject, is better in portrayal than in painting,
more enei^etic than refined, more sturdy than spiritual.
Nils Forsberg became the Swedish Bonnat His " Family of
Acrobats before the Circus Director" contained nude, virile
figures of so much energy that Bonnat could have painted them
no better. His last picture, which was awarded the first medal
in the Paris Salon of 1888, "The Death of a Hero," was one of
those attempts, in the manner of Hugo Vogel or Arthur Kampf,
to bring the traditional historical picture into the province of
modern painting of the time.
Through competition with the productions of historical paint-
ing, Swedish landscape was brought into the same peril as land-
scape in Germany. Painters only represented the great dramas
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3S6
MODERN PAINTING
Paris : Bousaod-Vaiadon.]
FoRSBERG :
*The Death of a Hero."
of nature, and merely emphasized what was strikingly effective
in them. Red mountains, green cascades, tblue rocks, black
suns, all the physical, geological, and meteorological phenomena
of nature in Northern lands, were painted upon great spaces of
canvas, which are valuable as descriptive accounts, but are seldom
so in any artistic sense. The midnight sun plays a particularly
prominent part in the picture market. And it was only dis-
covered afterwards that even in the most Northern parts these
phenomena of nature do not take place in quite such a decorative
manner as in the pictures of this period.
In Marcus Larsson Sweden had her Eduard Hildebrandt — a
man whose reputation went up like a meteor and vanished as
swiftly into the night. A peasant lad, a saddler's apprentice, an
opera-singer, and a fashionable painter, he made himself talked
about as much through his eccentric art as through his eccentric
life, and finally died in poverty and want in 1864 in London. He
had naturally a great deal of talent. Exceedingly enterprising, and
gifted with great imagination, he received the most various im-
pressions of nature, took up the most various technical methods,
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SWEDEN 357
saw things in a large way and endeavoured to render their total
impression. But he did not possess the love of truth or the
strength of character to develop his talent. As soon as he dis-
covered what people admired in his work, he became a bold
virtuoso whose only object was to paint more vehemently and
showily than his contemporaries. Ruysdael, intensified in all
that is fantastically scenical and then embellished with Gudin's
effects of light, would result in something more or less like Marcus
Larsson. In his pictures he heaps together the stage-properties
of agitated Swedish scenery — waterfalls, huge cliffs casting re-
flections of themselves upon steel-blue lakes. And he boasts in
his letters of having outstripped Ruysdael whenever he succeeded
in making a composition " more opulent." The most insane
effects of light, white and red mountains, waterfalls in the sunset,
burning steamers, lighthouses, comets, and houses aflame by night
had all to be introduced to cover his want of intimate emotion,
with their decorative effects on the big drum.
Alfred Wahlberg is to Larsson more or less what Lier is to
Eduard Hildebrandt He had made in Paris a very thorough
study of the masters of Fontainebleau, especially Dupr^, and he
communicated to his countrymen the principles of the French
paysage inHme^ but only in an elegantly adapted and diluted
form. His range indeed is wide : it extends from the Northern
landscapes of snow to the brilliant summer splendour of Italy.
Like Lier, he had a special love of dreamily glowing evening
lights, and understood the means of soothing the eye by a ragoUt
of finely graduated tones. He delighted in searching for diflSculties
and showing off" his technique. His art is rich in change, full
of surprises, pliant, elegant, and superficially brilliant, but too
merely intelligent and mannered, too calculated in its effects,
for him to be brought into close relationship with the masters
of Fontainebleau. The landscapes of those classic artists were
the offspring of the most cordial devotion to nature, those of
Wahlberg are the products of chic. The vigour of directness
is wanting in his feeling for nature, his method of expression is
the reverse of simple. His strength does not rest upon rapid
sketching, but upon the pointing and rounding of an impression.
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3S8 MODERN PAINTING
He was, like Larsson, merely a painter of effective points, though
he was less crude ; his mood is not so forced, but his artificiality
of sentiment is the same.
The living generation is far more disposed to award the palm
to two other painters who were held in less honour by their
contemporaries, two who never came into contact with the school
of Fontainebleau, though they are more nearly allied to it in the
fundamental principle of their work.
Gustav Rydberg never got beyond a meagre style of painting,,
for he had no experience derived from foreign countries. All
his details are worked out with diffidence. His pictorial method
savours of the studio, his scale of colour frequently makes a trite
effect, his handling is circumscribed in expedients. Nevertheless
his pictures are preferable to those of Wahlberg, for they are
delicate and full of intimate feeling, whereas those of the latter
are glittering. Like the Dutch landscape-painters of the seven-
teenth century, he did not go far to find his motives. He buried
himself in the meagre scenery of his home at Skon, and was at
no pains to render it interesting by adorning it. Misty winter
landscapes and summer moonlight pictures, with thatched
cottages, mills in the mood of an autumnal afternoon, huge hay-
stacks, green pastures, ploughed land, fields and forests, village
streets, horses and waggons, such are the idyllic passages of nature
which he has a preference for rendering. And his works are
those of a man who followed his own way, consistently cleaving
to his native land with a tender spirit.
But the most sympathetic and personal effect is made by
Edvard Bergh. When he returned home at the same time as
Larsson in 1857, the course of the one was that of a waterfall
foaming and raging and breaking its way with forceful vehemence
between the rocks, to lose itself sadly in the sand ; the course of
the other that of a quiet rivulet swelling to a stream, and at last
discharging itself into a woodland lake, where the birches are
mirrored and pale water-lilies flush in the beams of the setting
sun. Marcus Larsson, a celebrity in his lifetime, is now for-
gotten, and Edvard Bergh, almost unknown in his lifetime, is
now held to have been a forerunner of more recent workers.
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Before he became a
painter Bergh had
finished his Uni-
versity studies. As
a young official he
sauntered through
the rustic villages,
seeing nature as
much with the eyes
of a botanist as with
those of a landscape-
painter. After he
had painted a little in
a dilettante fashion
in Upsala, the works
of the Diisseldorfers
made him decide in
1850 to go to the
Academy of the
Rhineland. In 1855,
the year of the
World Exhibition,
he was in Paris, and travelled thence to Geneva to Calame,
who then stood at the zenith of his fame. But these foreign
influences were soon overcome. The "View of Uri," in the
Berlin National Gallery, is one of the few pictures in which
Bergh followed Calame in aiming at the grand style. Home
once more in 1857, he became the earliest representative of
intimate landscape-painting in Sweden. Bergh was, in fact, a
man of harmonious temperament, happy and contented with his
work, a quiet, thoughtful, dreamy man, whose blood never boiled
and raged.
Thus he had no passion for nature in her majesty and
dramatic wrath, but loved her soft smile and her still, dreamy
solitude. There are no storm-clouds in his pictures, no motives
of cliffs with hoary, foaming waterfalls, no grey quarries and
mossy, primaeval pines — no complicated problems of light and
E. Bergh: "A Pond in the Forest."
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MODERN PAINTING
£. Bergh : " Under the Birches."
vehement tours de force of the brush. He delighted in the fir-
woods and glassy rivers of his home, the delicate birch-groves
and the dreamy shores of its lakes, the bright summer sky of
Sweden, the quiet pastures and grazing cattle, white clouds
slowly shifting onwards, and lonely paths leading between the
spreading roots of trees to out-of-the-way and sheltered valleys.
And his delicate painting, which is full of sentiment, corresponds
with the soft intimate character of this landscape. Ever)rthing
which afterwards became characteristic of the new tendency,
the efforts to arrest the transitory and momentary moods of
nature, the first direct impression, was also the note of Bergh's
latest works. Some of his birch-forests with water and cattle
are so fresh and fragrant in their scheme of colour that they
might belong to the most modern art Always following his
own taste, and as much a naturalist as an artist in colours, as
much an analyst as an emotional artist, Bergh showed Swedish
landscape the way which led to its present prime.
The turning-points in Swedish art coincide more or less yA^
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SWEDEN
361
Stockholm : BoMMiVr.]
Hugo Salmson.
the years of the Paris Exhibi-
tions: in 1856 it was swayed by
Diisseldorf, in 1867 by Couture
and Piloty; in 1878 it began
to enter on the lines of Manet
and Bastien-Lepage. Some of
the Swedes who had been long
resident in Paris early commu-
nicated the new principles to
their compatriots.
Many experiments had been
already made by Hug^o Salmson,
who is now a man upwards of
fifty, before he entered the pro-
vince which has been his speciality
since 1 878. Under Charles Comte,
whose studio he entered after
his removal to Paris, he painted ornamental historical pictures
of manners. Benjamin Constant incited him to his life-size
•** Odalisque," painted with a sleek brush. And Meissonier was
his inspiration when he exhibited his "Rehearsal of Tartuffe," a
spirited and pliant Rococo illustration, where the variegated cos-
tumes of modish courtiers stood out daintily in an elegant old-
world interior. But, as soon as the earliest open-air pictures of
Bastien-Lepage appeared, he immediately followed this new
tendency. His "Labourers in the Turnip Field" of 1878, now
in the possession of the Goteborg Art Union, had an importance
for Sweden similar to that which Liebermann's " Women
mending Nets" had for Germany. The modern period for
Swedish art had begun — the period when a more austerely
truthful painting followed an art of variegated and gorgeous
•colours. Even in France Salmson had made his mark with
this work, and his "Arrest" — a village street in Picardy where
a couple of gendarmes have taken a young woman in charge
— was the first Swedish picture obtained for the Mus^e
Luxembourg. This was in 1879. And in 1883 his "Little
Gleaners" was admitted into the Stockholm National Museum.
VOL. III. 24
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MODERN PAINTING
Stockholm : Bonmer.]
August Hagborg.
Yet this rapid success suggests that
Salmson is not a master of haughty-
individuality, whom it takes time
to comprehend. Beneath his hands
Manet's hard, virile art has become
a thing made for popularity. His
peasant girls are graceful, his land-
scapes charming, and his problems
of light meet with a solution which
is rather piquant than sincere. His
last pastel portraits and pictures
of children are often completely
mawkish. He is not a robust and
original artist, but one who has gone
tamely with the stream. However^
he is a good painter, who acquired
greater technical readiness in Paris
than any of his countrymen. His representations of the life
of the people in Picardy appeal to the great public by their
confident and noble drawing, their refined treatment of colour,,
their dainty handling of the brush, and their characterization,,
which is spirited if it is not profound. Through this treatment^
adapted to the requirements of the Salon, he won a more rapid
popularity for the new principles than would have been otherwise
possible.
And August Hagborg^ whose success dates from the same-
years, and whose ductile talent ran through the same course
of development, is his twin brother in the history of Swedish
art Having begun in Paris with little hard but carefully
painted costume-pictures from the Directoire period, he after-
wards found his vocation in representing the sea-coasts and
fisher-folk of Northern France. "The Ebb-tide on the English
Channel" — a number of oyster-fishers coming home with their
booty over the fresh, clear sea, and a bright sky with bluish
strips of cloud — was bought by the Mus6e Luxembourg in
1879, and from that time he was a popular painter. A low^
yellowish strand, spreading broadly in the foreground, fishing
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SWEDEN
ZH
skiffs, the peaceful
sea, and a clear,
bluish -white ' sky,
beaming in the
mild light of a
warm noonday sun,
or in the chill gleam
of a dull morning,
such are the phases
of nature which
Hagborg has chosen
and repeated in all
his pictures with
various accessory
figures.
Here there are
fishers making for
the shore, here a
priest blessing a
newly built skiff,
here nothing but the
strand with a row
of boats in shining,
silvery morning
mist, here the dwellers of the strand talking together before
setting out. The veracity and roughness of Michael Ancher is.
not to be asked from him. His people are of a cleanly, bloom-
ing race, a people who are innocent of laxity, and know nothing
of the wearisomeness of life. They are the types of the fine
lad and the brave lass which may be found in the novels of
Pierre Loti, a little more refined than they are in reality, and
artificially polished and freshened up. Trim fisher-girls and
young men are knotting together nets. Girls go merrily laugh-
ing homewards from the strand; talking, jesting, or silent and
embarrassed couples sit on the grass or make a rendez-vous with
each other by a boat-side. Hagborg has often repeated him-
self, varied the types and moods which once made him popular,.
Hagborg: "The Return Home.'
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364 MODERN PAINTING
until they have grown tiresome ; but besides many pictures
turned out for the market, and striking rather through their chic
than any personal emotion, he has produced several works in
recent years, such as "The Potato-Gatherers," "The Church-
yard of Tourvilleu," and the like, which show a vigorous
striving in an onward direction.
Wilheltn van Gegerfelt, the landscape-painter, is the third
of these Parisian Swedes. Since 1872 he has lived in Paris,
and there he has become a thoroughbred Frenchman. At
present, too, he seems a somewhat old-fashioned painter, whose
Venetian lagunes and deep blue summer nights of Naples have
more in common with Oswald Achenbach and Clays than
with Billotte and Monet Like Wahlberg, he had a greater
regard for chic and "beautiful tone" than was favourable to the
sincerity of his landscapes. But when he appeared he excited
a great deal of notice by his bright scale of colour and his
refined taste. In his works the moonlight rests upon the
Canal Grande, or a delicate grey is spread over some district
on the French coast The sun glitters on the snowfields of
Upsala; bright, shining rain comes hissing down in a Swedish
village ; or skaters in the silvery dusk of a winter evening hum
swiftly over the crystal surface of the frozen lake.
After 187s the young Swedes studying in Paris banded
round these three painters. As early as the winter of 1877-8
this Swedish colony could boast of eighteen names. Most of
their owners lived at Montmartre, where Hagborg had his
studio. Their general place of reunion was the Restaurant
Hoerman in the Boulevard de Clichy, which was christened
" The Swedish General Credit Company " in Paris, with reference
to the kindly consideration of the proprietor in money-matters.
In the evening the company went across to the Cafe de
THermitage and played billiards. From the principal table
reserved every evening for the blond and blue-eyed guests
there rose Swedish quartettes. Amongst these "knights of the
stew-pan," of whom many a one did not know how he was
to live upon the following day, there reigned a wild spirit of
youth, an audacious levity, but there was also a sincere and
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SWEDEN 365
fervent love of work which resulted in a sustained exertion of
all their powers.
To two of the most talented it was not accorded to reap
at home, in later days, the fruits of their labour. The wag of
the Parisian clique, Karl Skdnberg — a droll, little, hump-backed
man, whom August Strindberg used as prototype for the painter
in his charming sketch The Little Being's— died in 1883, just
after he had come back to Stockholm, when he was scarcely
three-and-thirty. And Swedish art was robbed of Hugo Birger
at the same youthful age four years afterwards. The former
was a fine landscape-painter, who, making Paris his head-
quarters, searched for pictorial motives in Holland and Italy.
In Holland he painted the harbour of Dort, in Italy the
glowing blaze of Etna and the olive-groves of Naples, the
blooming fruit-trees of the Villa Albani or the golden skies
and rocking skiffs of Venice. He is most effective when he
renders with large strokes a part of the harbour with
glittering water, the little figures of fishermen, and glowing sails,
or when he steeps his pictures in a grey dusk impregnated with
colour. In Venice he is peculiarly at home, not only the sunny
joyous Venice of spring, glowing with colour, but Venice in
rainy autumn in her widow's weeds. Sailing through the
lagunes in a skiff, he sketched the wharves and canals with their
black ships and deep red sails, and the diversified masses of
the Giudecca.
A virtuoso who often displays great audacity, Hugo Birger,
extended his field of study to Spain and Africa. The ideal
which he pursued with feverish activity throughout his brief
life was to meet with curious costumes, to paint with novel
colours, to experience novel moods, and to stand upon the soil
of a strange and distant land. The blue sky of Spain glares
upon white walls, the glowing sun of North Africa glances
upon the forms of negroes and gaudy turbans. One of his
most luxuriant feasts of colour was called " Breakfast in Granada : "
a party of ladies and gentlemen in light, white, and blue are
breakfasting out of doors ; the noonday sun ripples, falling
white through the foliage, and playing upon the bottles and
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MODERN PAINTING
.aW.
•»**■
,liMi ttUtt*'!'
Stockholm : Bonnier.]
Kreuger :
** Twiught/
fruits. Right in
the sun stands a
peacock, unfolding
all the iridescent
splendour of his
tail. Having re-
turned home for
a short time, he
painted the Stock-
holm theatres lit up
by electricity, and
the glowing colour-
symphonies of the
fjords. His last
great picture repre-
sented the Swedish
artists breakfasting in the Restaurant Ledoyer on the varnishing
■day of the Salon. But when it hung in the Salon of 1887 he
had ended his career. In him and Skanberg Swedish painting
lost two men of forcible talent ; they were not great artists of
fine individual sentiment, but they were two bold and vigorous
painters, who loved painting for its varied colour, and rejoiced in
being painters with their whole heart
The others who, at that time, were members of the Swedish
colony in Paris, now work in their native land. Like the Danes
Tuxen and Kroyer, they regarded Paris merely as a high-school,
to be gone through before they could begin a fresh course of
activity in Stockholm. Those who came to Paris first adapted
themselves almost more to French than to Swedish painting,
for through their place of residence they were led to paint tlie
life of the French and not that of the Swedish people. Fishers
from Brittany and peasants from Picardy alternate with views
of Fontainebleau and the French coasts. Even when a picture
now and then seems to be Swedish, this Swedish aspect is merely
an aff*air of costumes brought from the mother-country, and fitted
on to Parisian models.
But the artists who returned to Stockholm gradually made
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SWEDEN
367
Stockholm: BonnitrJl
Prince Eugene of Sweden : A Landscape.
Swedish art out of the
Parisian art of Hagborg
and Salmson. Neverthe-
less the cosmopolitan
character still remains.
In Denmark that curiously
emancipated artist Kroyer
is perhaps the only one
who acquired a certain
elegance, boldness, and
nervous vibration through
contact with French paint-
ing. Otherwise Danish
painting has a virgin bash-
fulness, something self-con-
tained and homely in its
preference for quiet corners
and cosy rooms in lamp-
light. All those emotions
which elsewhere find their way into outward life are turned
inwards with the Danes, and live in their spirit in a sharpened,
subtilized, and concentrated form. Swedish art is more mun-
dane, more graceful and gleaming : it regards what is simple
as bourgeois \ it loves extremes, caprices, a bright, tingling
Impressionism, the piquant, bizarre effects of light, vibrating
chords. Swedish painters have a less national accent than the
Danes, a less personal method of seeing things, but all the
more taste and flexibility. It does one good to look at
Johansen's pictures ; they are so cordial in sentiment that one
forgets the artist, while in the presence of Swedish works one
thinks only of the dexterous technique. They are rather ex-
amples of technical artifice than works of art, rather graceful
bravura paintings than intimate confessions ; they originate rather
from manual adroitness than from the painter's heart. More-
over the Swedish painters are not to be found amongst those
men of rough, forceful nature who are ridiculed and scoffed
at by the great public at exhibitions. They are never austere
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MODERN PAINTING
Stockholm : BonnUr.}
LiLjEFORs: ''Blackcocks at Pairing-time."
and puritanical, but rather piquant, pleasing, charming, and
gracious. What is cAtc has mastered what is natural in their
pretty fantasies of colour, and has even made a sort of knickknacks
out of the very peasants. Exceedingly quick in assimilation,,
they have made themselves more familiar than any other nation
with all the sleights of art that may be learnt in Paris, and by
these have created works which are exceedingly refined and
modern.
In the province of landscape-painting R6n6 Billotte would
offer the most ready parallel to the works of the youngest Swedes.
Nature in Sweden has not the idyllic coyness of Danish scenery,,
nor has it the rude air of desolation and wildness which gives
the Norwegian its sombre and melancholy stamp. It is more
coquettish. Southern, and French, and the Swedish painters see
it with French eyes. Their works have nothing mystical, elegiac,,
and shrouded, like those of the Danes. Everything is clear and
dazzling. In the one school there is a naturalness, a simplicity
which almost causes the spectator to forget the work of the
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SWEDEN
369
Stockholm : Bonnie.]
Bruno Liljepors.
brush ; the other gives, in the
first place, the impression of
a problem deftly solved. In
the one is the most extreme
reserve in colour, a soft grey
enveloping everything; in the
other a cunning play with
delicate gradations of tone,
an effort to analyze the most
fleeting moods of nature and
the most complicated effects
of light. There are bright
meadows and woodland clear-
ings under the most varied phases of light : when the dazzling
whiteness of the sun vibrates delicately through silvery gradations
of the atmosphere, or " rosy-fingered dawn " dallies with the little
white clouds, or the violet reflections of the deep red setting sun
fade wearily over a pool filled with lilies. There are woodlands
with graceful birches, the yellow autumnal leaves of which sparkle
in the slanting rays of the light, and still forest lakes with white
flowers Which flush in the radiance of the sinking sun. More-
over the wonders of the Malar See, with the magical mazes ot
its glittering arteries of water, give an opportunity for the solution
of difficult problems of light. The marvellous port of Stockholm
is painted with its splendid bridges, palaces, and shining rows of
houses, and creeks of the sea with the silvery reflections of the
moonlight upon their curling waves, and the turrets of lighthouses
rising solemnly over the ocean like great moons, and the windows
of houses, which have been lit up, blazing like flickering will-o'-the
wisps in the blue misty veil of twilight ; little skiffs and graceful
sailing vessels, which, in the dying sunset, glide across the blue
waters as lightly as nutshells ; shores against which the waves
chafe foaming and dazzlingly white, scourged by the fresh morning
wind, or rockbound coasts, which lie, black and misty, beneath
the dark starry sky. Parts of the streets are painted in that
vague illumination which is neither bright nor dark, neither day
nor night ; bridges crowded with a fluctuating throng, and lighted
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MODERN PAINTING
Paris: Boussod-Valadon.']
Oesterund :
'A Baptism in Brittany.**
by flickering lamps. Even when winter is celebrated, it is not its
melancholy and its sad mists that are painted, but its glittering
gladness and its bright, invigorating cold, bouquets and wreaths
of snow, a fairy architecture of white snow with the bluest sky
as background.
Per Eckstrom, one of the older artists, paints the poetry of
•desolation : the silence of the heath, when all its outlines are
dissolved in the dusk and all its colours are extinguished ; the
new moon over a clear lake, with groups of trees reflected
tremulously in the water; the silvery tone of afternoon lying
-dreamily over half dim plains ; still, sequestered pools, sown
with luxuriant water-plants in the blood-red sunset, or the vague
light of moonrise. A quiet part of the heath in Oeland, in the
subdued, tender, silvery tone of dusk ; a glittering forest lake,
in which the deadened sunshine plays in a thousand reflections ;
and the study " Sun and Snow," a mingled play of red and white
colours, making the most intense effect, were the pictures by which
he introduced himself in Germany, at the Munich Exhibition of
1892, as one of the finest landscape-painters of the present.
The painter of winter twilight and autumn evenings in the
North was Nils Kreuger, who had already in Paris shown a
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SWEDEN
371
Munich : HanfsidngL]
BjOrck : " In the Cowshed."
preference for phases of winter and rain, dusk and vapour. In
his delicate little pictures he rendered desolate village streets, with
the soft twilight sinking over their poverty-stricken houses and
gardens, pallid moonshine lying ghostly over solitary buildings
and deserted paths losing themselves in the darkness, phases of
wintry afternoon, and skaters whose fleeting outlines speed lightly
like vague shadows across the glassy lake.
Karl Nordstrdnty more uneven and less delicate, though always
captivating through his bold experiments, chiefly celebrates the
Northern winter with its cold splendour of colour, its rarefied,
transparent air, its dazzling sunshine, and its soft snow resting
like sugar upon the branches of the leafless trees. He has
likewise worked much and successfully upon motives from
Skargard under sombre phases of night and animated by the
varied lights of steamers slowly gliding past the hilly coasts,
upon harbour views with glowing rocket-lights, yellowish-red
pennons, and little steamboats running from shore to shore with
arrowy swiftness.
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MODERN PAINTING
Stockholm : Bonnier. '\
Carl Larsson,
Scarcely thirty years
^T\ i^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^S^' ^"^ already one
^^ « m^ t 3^^^ amongst the best, Prince
^ @fc(tiitatf^\ /<^^^K Eugene arrested melo-
dious moods of nature
in Skon and Soederman-
land : in his pictures a
still forest, with delicate
birches and plashing
streamlets, is touched by
the violet mists around
the evening sun ; little
golden clouds hang over
the sea; or- the sun
shines with dazzling
light upon a glad, green meadow-land ; or else the moon
trembles in long shining lines upon a bluish lake.
Robert Thegerstrdm travelled much, and, in addition to
delicate French harmonies in grey, exhibited pretty studies
from Egypt and Algiers. A sturdy artist, Olof Arborelius, has
produced Swiss and Italian landscapes, painted during his
years of pilgrimage, and, in his later period, Swedish landscapes,
true and powerful in their local accent, and of rich and
luxuriant colouring. The dazzling rays of the summer sun
and the glittering effects of winter snow have principally inspired
his dexterous brush. Axel Lindmann paints honest, clear grey
landscapes enlivened with delicate green, and they show that
he has more than once looked at Damoye. In Alfred Thome
the mountain and Malar scenery has found an interpreter, in
John Kindborg the environs of Stockholm, and in Carl Johannson
the world in its wintry charms. Johan Krouthin painted
quarries, forcible summer-pieces from Skagen, arable fields
in autumn in the sunshine, pictures of spring with powerful,
chalky effects of light, or garden pictures in which he united
all kinds of gay flowers in joyous combinations of colour. The
sea-painter Adolf Nordling attaches himself to the great
Danish sea-painters by the confident manner in which he
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SWEDEN
373
places his vessels in the
waves. His air is fresh
and clear ; light and fluent
his water. Victor Forssell,
Johan Ertcsofiy Edvard
Rosenberg,2XiA Ernst Lund-
Strom are other painters
who devote themselves to
the port of Stockholm.
In the province of
animal painting the men
of the older generation,
Wennerberg, Brandelius,
and others, have been re-
placed by Georg Arsenius
and Bruno Liljefors.
Arsenius has been known
for many years by his
bright, sunny, and dashing
renderings of the Paris
races, and by numerous
rapid and confident draw-
ings from the world of
sport, published in the French journals. After making frequent
contributions to the Paris Salon without exciting any special
attention, Bruno Liljefors introduced himself to the German
public, for the first time, in 1892, in Munich. Removed from
the Stockholm Academy on account of unfitness, he withdrew
himself and his models — tame and wild animals, birds and four-
footed beasts— to an out-of-the-way village in the north of
Sweden, and here became one of the most individual personalities
of modern art. The barren, commonplace scenery of Uppland,
with its hills clothed with meagre woods and its sparse fir-forests
and its green fields"^ and meadows in the winter snow, usually
forms the background for his representations of animal life : they
are the works of a man who, without having been in Paris,
worked out by himself all the inspiring principles of foreign
Stockholm : Bonnur.]
Carl Larsson : "Tmr Wm op th« Viking."
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MODERN PAINTING
Stockholm : Bonnitr.^
Richard Bergh.
painting. In his earliest
years Liljefors devoted him-
self with zeal and earnest
purpose to open-air painting,
painted woods and meadows
in that most intense sunlight
loved by Manet ; then he
studied the Japanese, and
assimilated their spirited
sureness in seizing transient
movements. But, in these
days, this technical bravura
is only used as a vehicle
for his fresh and healthy
observation and intimate
feeling. Liljefors knows his
models. He has learnt to
arrest the most instantaneous
movements of animals ; he has made himself familiar with their
way of life, their characteristics and their habits. He represents
the spoit of birds in the sunshine, the hare sitting solitary
upon a snowy field of a grey winter afternoon, the hound, the
household of foxes, quails, magpies, and reed-sparrows as they
hide shivering in the snow.
And just as he represents these animals with the essential
accuracy of an old sportsman, he paints his men with the
good-humour of a head-ranger, living in the country and
playing cards with peasants in the tavern. His landscapes
have been seen with the fresh, bright eyos of one accustomed
to live out of doors, one who can go about without having
numbed and frozen fingers. When he paints boys taking nests
or getting over the palings to steal apples he does it with a
boy's sense of enjoyment, as though he would like to be of the
party himself. When he paints the sunny corners of a peasant
garden, where diapered butterflies poise on the flowers and
sparrows scratch merrily till they cover themselves with sand,
one would take Liljefors himself for the old gardener who had
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SWEDEN
375
laid out and planted this
plot of land. Whether he
represents the darkness
of a summer night, or
blackcocks pairing in a
dark green valley, or the
solitude of the forest,
where the poacher is
awaiting his victim with
strained attention, or the
sombre humour of after-
noon upon the heath, where
the sportsman is plodding
wearily home, followed by
his panting dogs, there
runs through his picture
a deep and unforced sen-
timent, a reverence for the
mysticism of nature and
the majestical sublimity of
solitude. Living in a far-
off village, out of touch with the artist world throughout the whole
year, surrounded only by his animals, and observing nature at all
seasons and at all hours, Liljefors is one of those men who have
something of Millet's nature, one of those in whom heart and
hand, man and artist, are united. It is only through living so
intimately with the theme of his studies that he has seen Swedish
landscape with such largeness and quietude, and learnt to overhear
the language of the birds and the whisper of the pines.
Beyond this it is impossible to divide Swedish painters
according to "subjects" or provinces. The more "Swedish"
they are, and the more deftly they have learnt to play with
technique, the more they are cosmopolitans who take a pleasure
in venturing upon everything. Axel Kulle represents peasant
life in South Sweden in a very authentic manner with regard to
costume and furniture, yet with a humorous accent which is a
relic of his Dusseldorf period. A sturdy, prosaic realist, Alf
K M.:±m
1^
vi# -...
Iv ::
%
1 ;
,v \ '^ .. ■
Stockholm: Bonnitr,}
R. Bergh : •' At Evenfall."
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MODERN PAINTING
Go*, <Us Bgaux-Atis.}
R. Bergh : Portrait of his Wipe.
WallaneUr, is the leading
representative of natural-
ism in the treatment of the
proletariat. Old men and
women in the street, the
inn, or the market-place,
he places upon canvas as
large as life, and his works
are energetic, fresh, and
full of colour, though with-
out delicacy or the play
of feeling. Axel Borg
paints peasant life in
Orebro: street-scenes and
fairs, or farms of a Sunday
forenoon, when the waggon
stands ready for an ex-
cursion to the neighbour-
ing village. The snowy landscape of Lapland, with its moun-
tains, pines, and waterfalls, has a forcible and fearless interpreter
in Johan Tir^n, who is a robust and pithy painter. AUan
Oesterlind, an artist who tells his tale with delicacy, has now
settled in Brittany, where he paints rustic life in the field and
at home, by daylight and firelight, in the market-square and
the churchyard, with Parisian flexibility. In him the child-world
in particular, has a fine observer : he surprises children in their
games and their griefs, simply, and without mixing in them
himself; they are all absorbed in their employment, and not
one of them steps out of his surroundings to coquet with the
spectator. And Ivar Nyberg delights in family scenes round the
lamp of an evening, young ladies sitting at the piano by candle-
light, or old women telling girls their fortunes by cards ; those
twilight motives and those indeterminate effects of light in an
interior which are so dear to the Danes.
There is something a little German about Oscar BJorck^ which
is quite in accordance with his Munich training. He can neither
be called particularly spirited nor particularly intimate, but he
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SWEDEN 377
}ias a sound and sincere naturalism, a quiet and graceful style,
and an even methcwi of creation, which is free from all nervous
intensity. In Skagen, where he worked for some time, he was
affected by Danish influences which prompted him to pictures
from the life of seamen — " The Signal of Distress " and so forth
— in the manner of Michael Ancher. Intercourse with Julius
Kronberg in Rome led him to paint a " Susanna," an adroit
studio study in the style of French Classicism. The leading
work of his Roman period was a representation of a forge, an
exceedingly sound picture, in which he analyzed correctly and
with adherence to fact the play of sunbeams on the smoke-
grimed walls of the smithy, their blending with the fire on the
hearth, and the strife of this double illumination of sun and fire
upon the upper part of the tanned bodies of the workmen. In
Venice he painted the Piazza d'Erbe flooded with sunshine, and
the interiors of old Renaissance churches, on the gleaming mosaics
of which dim daylight plays, broken by the many-coloured glass
windows. A "Stable," upon the walls and planks of which the
•early sun fell in large, sparkling patches, a " Sewing-Room "
with the broad daylight glancing tremulously over the white
figures of girls, and, occasionally, able portraits, were his later
works, which were sterling and powerful, though they were not
particularly spirited.
Carl Larsson is amusing, coquettish, and mobile, one of those
capricious, facile men of talent to whom everything is easy. He
first made a name as an illustrator, and his piquant representa-
tions of fashionable life as well as his grotesquely bizarre
caricatures are the most spirited work which has arisen in Sweden
in the department of illustration during the century. This
facility in production remained with him later. Always attempt-
ing something novel and mastering novel spheres of art, he went
from oil-painting to pastels and water-colours, and from sculpture
to etching. The refined water-colours which he painted in
Prance — pictures of little gardens with young fruit-trees, gay
flowers, old men, and beehives — were followed by delicate
landscapes from the neighbourhood of Stockholm and Dalame,
interiors bathed in sunlight, and amusing portraits of his family
VOL. III. 25
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378
MODERN PAINTING
and his feminine pupils.
But this was merely a
transitional stage to " grand
art," the decorative painting
which had been the aim of
his youthful dreams. Even
in the days when he worked
at a Stockholm photogra-
pher's, and was employed
in retouching, he painted
in an audacious effervescent
humour pictures like "The
Sinner's Transit to Hell," or
old bards singing their last
ballad to the sinking sun.
Even then the motley old
wooden figures of the
Stockholm churches had
bewitched him, and the fan-
tastic woodcuts of Martin
Schongauer and Diirer.
In his decorative works he
sports with all these elements like a spirited tattler who has
seen much and babbles about it in a way that is witty and
stimulating, if not novel. In the three allegorical wall-paintings^
Renaissance, Rococo, and Modern, which he designed for the
Fiirstenberg Gallery in Stockholm, Tiepolo, Goltzius, Schwind,.
and modern French plastic art are boldly and directly inter-
mingled. In the series of wall-paintings for the staircase of the
girls' school in Goteborg, where he represented the life of
Swedish women in different ages, the technique of open-air
painting, naturalistic force, curious yearning for the magic of
the Rococo period, daring of thought suggesting Cornelius, and
the pale grey hue of Puvis de Chavannes are mixed so as to
form a strange result It all has something of the manner of
a poster, with but little that is monumental or, indeed, inde-
pendent. But Larsson plays with all his reminiscences with.
\Arii8i sc]
Zorn: Portrait of Himself.
^^^
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SWEDEN
379
such an attractive and
sovereign talent, the total
effect is so fresh and
delightful, so vivid and
full of fantastic point, so
effective in colour and in
substance, so far removed
from all dry didacticism,
that he raises himself to
a position beside the
finest decorators of the
present age.
In Ernst Josephson,
another spirited impro-
viser, bold portraits and
motley scenes from the
life of the Spanish people
alternate with robust, life-
size pictures of forges,
millers' men, and Swedish
village witches. Georg
Pau/t pdAnitd little Italian
landscapes with a fine, natural lyricism of feeling, sea and bridge
pictures with gas-lamps, spring evenings when the setting sun
casts a red light into the room, or bright moonlight nights when
the air seems transformed into chill light. In some of his-
expressive pictures of sick-rooms there was an echo of H. von
Habermann, and in his last work, "The Norns," he followed,,
like the latter, a monumental and allegorical tendency in the
manner of Agache. As a pupil at the Academy, Richard Bergh
was called by his comrades the Swedish Bastien-Lepage. The
tender absorption in nature and the quiet, contemplative method
of his father, Edvard Bergh, is peculiar to him too. "The
Hypnotic Stance," which made him first known in the Paris
Salon, was rather a transient concession to the style of Gervex
than the expression of Bergh's own temperament. He paints
best when he represents the people whom he best knows, and
Stockholm : BonnurJ]
ZoRN : Portrait of his Mother and Sister.
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38o
MODERN PAINTING
his intimate portraits of
members of his family and
of particular friends only
find their counterpart in
corresponding likenesses
by Bastien-Lepage, Spe-
cially charming was the
simple picture of his wife
which he sent in 1886 to
the Paris Salon : a young
woman with a bright and
yet thoughtful look, who
is sitting with a piece of
white material upon her
knees and her arms crossed
in her lap ; she has just
left off sewing, and is
looking dreamily before
her. The pretty studio
picture " After the Sitting,"
with the young model
dressing with a tired air ; the landscape " Towards Evening,"
Tiarmonized entirely in yellow, and slightly tinged by qualities of
the Scotch school, with a fair peasant girl sitting upon a hill
with the evening sun pouring over her ; and several other land-
scapes with young ladies dreaming in a lonely park, themselves
bright and tender like the Northern summer, were further
•evidences of his refined and sympathetic art
The most deft and ultra-modern of these men is Anders Zom,
From the first day his whole career was one continuous triumph.
He was a peasant boy from Dalame, and he had left the school
at Einkoping, when he came in 1875 to Stockholm, at first with
the intention of becoming a sculptor. Even as a boy he had
•carved animals in wood while out in the pastures, and then
coloured them with fruit-juice. At school he painted portraits
from nature, without having ever worked on the usual drawing
models for copying. Thus he acquired early a keen eye for form
Stockholm: Bonnier, "l
Zorn: "The Omnibus."
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SWEDEN
381
and character, and adhered
to this vivifying principle
when in later years he
began at the Academy to
paint little scenes from
the life of the people
around his home. An
exhibition for the work of
pupils brought him his
earliest success. He
painted the portrait of a
girl in mourning, a little
picture full of delicate
feeling, in which the
piquant black veil specially
roused the admiration of
all ladies. From that
time he had quantities of
orders for portraits. He
painted children and
ladies with or without
veils, and was the lion of the Academy. With the sums which
he was enabled to save through these commissions he left home,,
and, after a circular tour through Italy and Spain, he landed
in London in 1885, and took a studio there in the most
fashionable part of the town. And purchasers and visitors
anxious to order pictures came quickly. Making London his
headquarters, he led a life of constant movement, emerging now
in Spain or Morocco, now in Constantinople or at home. His
field of work was changed just as often, and the development of
his power was rapid. He painted quantities of pictures in water-
colours — old Spanish beggars and gipsy women, Swedish children
and English girls. And he touched them all in a manner that
was fresh, wayward, piquant, and full of charm, and with a
dexterity quite worthy of Boldini. In his next period Swedish
open-air motives were what principally occupied this painter, who
was always seeking some new thing. Having busied himself
Stockholm : Bonnier.}
Zorn: "The Ripple of the Waves.'*
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382 MODERN PAINTING
with river motives in England, he now began at Dalaro to study
^aves. The large water-colour picture called "The Ripple of
the Waves" represented a quiet lake, the clear mirror of which
rippled lightly beneath the soft evening wind. A pair of summer
visitors, a lady and gentleman, are sitting upon a jetty, and in
front a washerwoman is talking with a boatman who is passing
T>y. A quick eye and a sure hand are requisites for painting
tiie sea. In its eternal alternation of ebb and flow it leaves the
painter no time for deliberate study. Zom attacked the problem
again and again, until he finally solved it. His first oil
picture, exhibited in Paris and acquired by the Mus6e Luxem-
bourg, rendered the peaceful hour when daylight yields softly to
the radiance of the moon : an old seaman and a young girl are
looking thoughtfully from a bridge down into a river. His next
picture he called "Oiit of Doors." Three girls are standing
naked on the shore after bathing, whilst a fourth is still merrily
splashing in the water. After this picture he became famous in
France. Everything in it had been boldly delineated. The water
lived, and rocked, and rippled. The reflections of the light and
the thousand rosy tints of evening were rendered with extreme
:sensitiveness of feeling, and played tenderly and lightly on the
water and the nude bodies of the women. And how natural
were the women themselves, how unconsciously graceful, as if
they had no idea that a painter's eye was resting upon them !
Zom has painted much of the same kind since : women
before or after bathing, sometimes enveloped in the grey
atmosphere, sometimes covered by the waves or the gleaming
light of the sky.
The most refined picture of all was a sketch exhibited in
Munich in 1892, and now in the possession of Edelfelt It
made such a bright and light effect, it was so simple and
entirely natural, that one quite forgot what sovereign mastery
was requisite to produce such an impression. The same bold
<:onfidence which knows no difficulties makes his interiors and
likenesses an object of admiration to the eye of every painter.
As he stood on a level with Cazin in his bathing scenes, he
•stands here on a level with Besnard. In his picture of 1892
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SWEDEN 383
the spectator looked into the interior of an omnibus. Through
the windows fell the dim light of a grey afternoon in Paris,
and carried on a vivid combat with the light of the gas-lamps
upon the faces of the men and women inside. The study of
light in the treatment of a woman asleep beneath the lamp
almost excelled similar efforts of the French in its delicate
effect of illumination. A ball scene made a fine and animated
impression elsewhere only to be found in the works of the
American Stewart. His portraits give the feeling that they
must have been painted at a stroke : they have a sureness in
characterization and a simple nobility of colour which admit
of a manifold play of tones within the very simplest scale.
Even his etchings, although they are summary and merely
indications, find their like in spirit and piquancy only in those
of Legros. Zorn is the most dexterous of the dexterous, a
conjurer whose hand follows every glance of his marvellously
organized eye, as if by some logical law of reflex action — a
man who can do everything he wishes, who rejoices in experiment
for its own sake, one who never ceases conquering new
difficulties in mere play, in every new work. He is a Frenchman
in his bravura and bold technique, and in this mundane grace
he is as typical of the Swedish art of the present as Johansen is
of Danish art in his simple, provincial intimacy of emotion.
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CHAPTER XLII
NORWAY
Previous history of Norwegian art: J. C Dahl and his import-
ance; Fearnley^ Frich, — The DUsseldorf period: Adolf Tidemand,
Hans Gude^ Vincent Stoltenberg-Lerche, Hans Dahl, Carl Hansen,
Niels Bj&rnson-Mdller , August Cafpelen, Morten- MUller, Ludwig
Munthe, E. A, Normann, Knud Bergs lien, Nicolai Arbo, —
From the middle of the seventies Munich becomes the high-school
of Norwegian art, and from. 1880 Paris. — Norwegians who
remained in Germany and Paris: M* Grdnvold, J, Ekendes,
Carl Frithjof- Smith, Grimelund. — Those who return home be-
come the founders of a national Norwegian art: Otto Sinding,
Niels Gustav Wenzel, Jdrgensen, Kolstoe, Christian Krohg,
Christian Skredsvig, Eilif Peterssen. — The landscape - ^inters :
Johan Theodor Eckersberg, Amandus Nilson, Fritz Thaulam,
Ge^'hard Munthe, Dissen, Skramstadt, Gunnar Berg, Edvard^
Dircks, Eylof Soot, Carl Uckermann, Harriet Backer, Kitty
Kielland, Hansteen, — Illustration : Erik Werenskiold, — Finnish
art: EdelfelL
THE Norwegians made their entry into modern art with
almost greater freedom and boldness.
What a powerful reserve modern art possesses in nationalities
which are not as yet broken in by civilization — nationalities
which approach art free from aesthetic prejudice, with the youngs
bright eyes of the children of nature — is most plainly shown
in the case of the Norwegians. That which is an acquired
innocence, a naivete intelligente in nations which have been long
civilized, is with them natural and unconscious. They had no
necessity to free themselves with pains from the yoke of false
principles of training which pressed in other countries upon all
the moderns. They were not immured for long years in the
cells of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, they did not need to fight
384
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NOJRWAY 385
the battles which the strongest had to wage elsewhere, before
they could find nature and themselves. As beings who had
never had a share in any artistic phase of the past, and who*
had grown up without much academical instruction, they began
to represent the soil and the people of their home with a
clearness of vision peculiar to races in direct contact with
nature, and with a technique as primitive as if brush and
pigments had been invented for themselves. For this reason,,
of course, the barbarism of the uneducated nature which enters
the world of art as a stranger is often betrayed in their works
even now. As yet they have not had time to refine their
ideas, to adorn and embellish them : they display them entirely
naked ; they are unable to subdue their strong sense of reality,,
breaking vehemently forth, to a cogent harmony. Their art
is sturdy and sanguine, and occasionally crude; even in colour
it is hard and brusque, and peculiarly notable for a cold red
and a dull violet — those hues so popular even in the painting
of Norwegian houses. The taste of an amateur formed on
the old masters would be infallibly shocked with their glaring
light, and those offensive tones which recur in their interiors,,
in their costumes and furniture. Indeed Norwegian painting
is still in leading strings. But it will cast them aside. The
inherent individuality which it has already developed makes
that a certainty.
Norway can look back to a great past in art even less
than Denmark. What was produced in earlier times has only
an architectonic interest. The history of painting begins for
them with the nineteenth century, and even then it has na
quiet course of development For the student the earliest name
of importance in that history is Johann Christian Dahl, who in
the twenties opened the eyes of German painters to the charm,
which nature has even in her simplicity. He was followed in
the mother-country by Feamley and Frichy who depicted with
a loving self-abandonment, not alone the romantic element in
Northern scenery, huge blue-black cliflTs, dark and silent fjords,,
and dazzling glaciers, but the gentle valleys and soft unobtrusive
hills of Ostland. The first figure-painter, the Leopold Robert
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386 MODERN PAINTING
of the North, was Adolf Tidemand, with whom began the
Diisseldorfian period of Norwegian art. The younger men oi
talent gathered round him and Gude, who came to Diisseldorf
in 1 84 1, four years later. Vincent Stoltenberg-Lerche painted
the interiors of monasteries and churches, which he utilized for
genre pictures, filling them in with suitable accessory figures
,d la Griitzner. Hans Dakl produced village idylls A la Meyerheim,
and survived into times when something more true and forcible
was demanded from art. Carl Hansen, who has now settled
in Copenhagen, began with genre scenes under the influence
•of Vautier, and afterwards acquired a prepossessing distinction
of colour in such pictures as " The Salmon-Fishers," " Sentence
of Death," "The Lay Preacher," and others of the same type.
Niels Bjomson-M oiler ^ August Cappelen, Morten-MuUer, Ludwig
Munthe, and Normann glorified the majestic configurations of
the fjords, the emerald-green walls of cliff, the cloven dingles
of the higher mountains, the fir-woods and the splendour of
the Lofoten. With the sleights of art which they had acquired
at Diisseldorf there were some who even attempted to work
upon scenes from the Northern mythology. Knud Bergslien
represented people in armour flying across the whitened plains
in huge snowshoes, giving as the titles of his pictures names
ohosen from the Viking period. Trained from 1851 under
Sohn and Hunten, Nicolai Arbo became the Rudolf Henneberg
of the North. The National Gallery of Christiania possesses an
" Ingeborg " from his hand, and a " Wild Hunt," in which the
traditional heroic types are transformed into Harold, Olaf, Odin,
and Thor, by a change in their attributes.
All these painters betrayed no marks of race. Schooled abroad,
and, to some extent, working away from Norway throughout
their lives, they merely reflect tendencies which were dominant
in foreign parts. In fact Norwegian art only existed because
a corner was conceded to it in public and private galleries in
alien countries. " National " it first became twenty years 2^0,
like Swedish art, and its development proceeded in a similar
fashion.
Like the Swedes, the Norwegians had, from the close of the
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NORWAY 387
sixties, a suspicion that Diisseldorf was no longer the proper
place for their studies ; and when Gude was called thence to
Carlsruhe, the Academy of the Rhineland was no longer a gather-
ing-place for Norwegian students. Some followed him to Baden,
but the majority repaired to Munich, where Makart had just
painted his earliest marvels of colour, where Lenbach and Defregger
had begun their career, and Piloty, Lindenschmit, and Diez were
famous teachers. But their sojourn by the Isar was not of long
duration either. While they were working there Liebermann
came back with new views of art from Paris. Through the
brilliant appearance made by the French at the Munich Ex-
hibition of 1878, their gaze was turned in a yet more westerly
direction. So they deserted the studios of Lindenschmit and
Lofftz for those of Manet and Degas, and left the contemplative
life of Munich for the surging world of art in Paris.
The last and decisive step was their return home. M. Gronvold
and /. Ekendes in Munich, C. Frithjof- Smith in Weimar, and
Grimelund in Paris are probably the only Norwegians who are
now working abroad. In the later and more forcible men there
was strengthened that sentiment for home which has such a
fertilizing power in art. Having learnt their grammar in Germany
and their syntax in Paris, they borrowed from the works of the
modern French the further lesson that an artist derives his
strength from the soil of his mother-country. And since then a
Norwegian art has been developed. In the distant solitudes of
the North, on their snowfields and Qords and meadows, the
former pupils of Diez and Lindenschmit became the great
original painters whom we now admire so much in exhibitions.
Men of various and ductile talent, like Otto Sinding, are but
little characteristic of Northern sentiment. During his long
residence in Carlsruhe, Munich, and Berlin, he was aflfected by
too many influences, and swayed by too many tendencies, from
those of Riefstahl and Gude to those of Boecklin and Thoma,
to proceed in any determined direction. With "The Surf" he
made his first appearance, in 1870, as a richly endowed marine-
painter ; in his " Struggle at the Peasant Wedding " he was a
genre painter after the manner of Tidemand; to his" Ruth amongst
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388 MODERN PAINTING
the Workers of the Field " Bastien-Lepage had stood godfather ;
several bathing scenes and peasant pictures recalled Riefetahl,
and his " Mermaid " suggested Thoma. Once, indeed, at the
annual exhibition of 1891 at Munich, it seemed as if he had
come to feel at home on Northern soil. There he exhibited a
beautiful picture of the Lofoten, '* Laplanders greeting the Return
of the Sun," and a couple of peasant pictures which gave a delicate
interpretation of the grave melancholy life of the North, There
was a peaceful picture of evening, one of sheep grazing on the
gentle declivity of a mountain. The day had sunk, and a glimmer-
ing Northern twilight rested over the hills, upon which a silvery
light was falling from the clear vault of the sky. He had also
a soft, delicate, languishing picture of spring, with rosy boughs
laden with blossom, stretching along a verdant mountain country,
and on the far side of a blue lake cliffs, still covered with dazzling
snow, rose into the clear sky. A strange magic lay in this contrast
between frost and blossom : it was as if a gentle breath of spicy
fragrance rose from a snowiield, or as if the splash of rushing
mountain streams were sounding in the air of spring. But in
the following year he appeared once more with fantasies in the
style of Boecklin — pieces which merely recalled Boecklin, and not
Sinding. Artistic polish has robbed him of all directness. In
fact he is a man of talent, pushing his feelers into everything
and drawing them back with the same ease ; a sensibility to
impressions which never wearies is his quality, and instability his
defect.
Almost all the others stand firmly on the soil of their country,
which has not been levelled by foreign civilization, and they are
in every sense its children. And it is curious to note that, even
in three countries closely united by race, religion, and language,
like Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, the modem principle of
individuality expressed itself in works of a distinctive character.
As the Danes are yielding and thoughtful, vague and misty,
and the Swedes elastic, graceful, mundane, and refined, the Nor-
v/egians are rough, angular, and resolute. There is a similar
difference between the three dialects : the language of the Swedes
has a vivid, emphatic, Parisian note ; that of the Danes runs in
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JVOJ^IVAV 389
a soft lisping chant ; while Norwegian speech is clear, simple,
and positive, although when written it is almost the same as
the Danish. Provincial geniality and loving tenderness are
in the ascendant amongst the Danes ; urbane grace, winning
refinement, and mundane polish amongst the Swedes; and in
the Norwegians there is a robust strength, something ascetic,
honest, and at once brusque and warm-hearted, an eafnest
and quite unvarnished sincerity. One feels that one is in a
country inhabited by a rude, scattered population, a nation of
fishers and peasants. Stockholm is the Athens and Christiania
the Sparta of the North, and Norway, in general, the great
fish-receptacle of Europe. Its principal sources of income are
the products of the sea : cod, cod-liver-oil, herrings, and fish-
guano. In no country in the world has man such a hard fight
with nature. And so it is that the Norwegian people seem so
quiet, inflexible, and composed, such veritable men of iron.
Denmark is a prosperous country, and its landscape is soft and
without salient form. Its people have the struggle of life behind
them. It is not merely the thousands of villas in the towns
that are neat and trim, for the country farms are so pleasantly
arranged, and so spick-and-span, that they might be taken for
summer residences where guests of the educated class are mas-
querading in rustic dress. In Norway, where nature takes
unusually bold proportions, man has still something of the iron
rusticity of a vanished age of heroes, and a tourist moves
amongst the old tobacco-chewing sailors, with their horny hands,
their leather trousers, and their red caps, as amongst giants.
These people, who are unwieldy ashore, look like antediluvian
kings of the sea when they stand in their skiffs. And the
painters themselves have also something rough and large-boned,
like the giants they represent. Everything they produce is
healthy and frank. The air one breathes in their work is not
the atmosphere of the sitting-room, but has the strong salt of
the ocean, a freshness as invigorating as a sea-bath. They
approach p/etn air with an energy that is almost rude, and paint
under the open sky like people who are not afraid of numb
fingers. The trenchant poetry of Northern scenery and the deep
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MODERN PAINTING
Com, dgs Btaux-Arts.]
Wekzel: "Morning."
[Artisit
religious feeling of the people find grave and measured expres-
sion in the works of Norwegian artists. They look at life with
keen bright eyes, and paint it in its true colours, as it is, simply
and without making pictorial points, without embellishment, and
without any effort after "style." Such is the clear and most
realistic ideal of the young Norwegian painters.
Niels Gustav Wenzel, JOrgensen, Kolstoe, and Christian Krohg
are names which form the four-leaved clover plant of Norwegian
fisher-painting.
Wenzely who went straight from his native country to Paris,
excited general indignation when he exhibited in Christiania
his first naturalistic and uncompromising pictures, which were
almost glaring in their effects of light. One of them, " Morning,"
represented a number of good people grouped round a table, at
the hour when blue daylight and lamplight are at odds. This
light was so trenchantly painted that the figures had yellow
rims thrown full on their faces. Around these stood uncouth.
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NORWAY
391
old-fashioned presses
and benches, firm,
clumpy chairs, look-
ing as if they had
stood for centuries
in the same place,
and must have been
once used by a de-
parted generation of
greater and stronger
beings. Door and
window looked out
upon log-houses and
the Norwegian high-
land scenery. In a
second picture, " The
Confirmation Feast,"
he roused a feeling
akin to compassion
for the poor people
he represented,
people whose life
runs by quiet and void of poetry even at their festivities.
It must be owned that Jorgensen has, likewise, a heavy hand,
yet he gives an earnest and essentially true rendering of the life
of labourers out of work, men staring vacantly before them,
women with tired faces, and the cold light relentlessly exposing
the poverty of little rooms.
Under Lindenschmit Kolstoe had already made many experi-
ments in the treatment of light; then he painted landscapes in
Capri, and lamplight studies in Paris, which were as glaring as-
they were sincere. At present he lives in Bergen. His fishers
are as large and wild as kings of the sea.
But by far the most powerful of these painters of fishermen
is Christian Krohg, who is equally impressive as an author and
as an artist. He is now a man upwards of forty, and first took
up painting in 1873 21^^^ he had passed his examination for the:
Scribnn's Mageuint.]
Krohg: "The Struggle for Existence."
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392 MODERN PAINTING
tar. Gude attracted him to Carlsruhe, where he worked under
•Gussow, and when the latter was summoned to Berlin he followed
him, and stayed there three years. In 1880 he was in Paris,
where he was affected by Naturalism in art and literature, by
Zola and by Roll. With these views he returned to Christiania.
Krohg is, indeed, a naturalist who has often a brutal actuality,
a painter of great and Herculean power. He seeks the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. As the author of
the social novel Albertine he made a name even before he had
worked with the brush, and pictures of the poor or scenes from
sick-rooms were his first artistic efforts. In one there sits a
poor, hard-featured sempstress, working busily by the dim lamp-
light, whilst the grey, lowering dawn has already begun to peer
through the window. In another a doctor has been called from
^ brilliantly lighted reception-room to the side of the poor
woman who stands shivering with cold in the dark ante-chamber.
The large picture in the National Gallery of Christiania, "The
Struggle for Existence," makes a strange, gloomy impression ;
there is a snowy street in the wintry dawn, and before the door
of a house a pushing, elbowing crowd, where the various figures
tell their tale of misery in all keys. From, the door a hand is
thrust out distributing bread ; otherwise the street is empty,
except for a policeman in the distance, who is sauntering in-
differently upon his beat, while elsewhere profound peace is
resting over Christiania. And he reached the extreme of merciless
reality in his picture of a medical examination in a bare room
at a police-station, with the grey daylight streaming in.
Yet Krohg's proper domain is not that of Zolaism in
pigments, but the representation of Norwegian pilots. The
steaming atmosphere of rooms which filled his earliest pictures
is changed in his later works for the fresh sea-air sweeping
keen over the salt tide. Krohg knows the sea and seamen,
the battle of man with the icy waters. What splendid figures
he has represented, men with muscles as hard as steel, bronzed
faces, oilskin caps, and blue blouses! How boldly they are
placed upon the canvas, with great sweeps of colour, while the
--cutting air blows in their faces ! When Krohg paints the part
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393
Ga». </<M B4aux-Aris,]
Skredsvig: '*Mix>summbr Night."
of a ship, it is fearlessly cut off, and though the waves are
not seen they are felt none the less. How impressive is the
sailor standing upon the ship's bridge, taking observations of
the weather, and the pilot spreading out the chart in the
cabin ! Even Michael Ancher, who was with Krohg in Skagen,
is a dwarf in comparison.
Christian Krohg's pictures are downright, but thoroughly
healthy. And when, for the sake of a change, he paints a
pretty fisher-girl in the fresh light of spring, this brusque
naturalist can be delicate, and this large-thewed artist becomes
gentle.
Christian Skredsvig and Eilef Petcrssen represent this gentler
side of Norwegian art. There is a soft kernel beneath the rough
husk, great tenderness beneath a rude appearance, something
indefinable, something like the devotion to silence.
Corot had been Skredsvi^s great ideal in Paris. He passed
through Normandy, rendering the profound and melancholy spirit
of sad, misty autumn days. He went to Corsica, and there he saw
flowery meadows and pleasant sequestered nooks, such as no one
had yet noticed in the coldly majestic scenery of the South.
His " Midsummer Night," exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1887
and afterwards acquired by the Copenhagen Gallery, was his first
VOL. III. 26
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394 MODERN PAINTING
work celebrating the still majesty of Northern landscape. A
boat is gliding over the mirror of a quiet lake. The boatman
has left hold of his oar to light his pipe, and not a wave
troubles the peaceful surface of the water. A man behind is
playing the harmonica, and two girls are listening. It is ten
o'clock, and the light dusk of summer, the suave magic of the
Northern nights, has shed over everything its soft mantle of
clear blue. In the background the light greyish-blue mountain
heights rise transparent and aerial, like a train of evening clouds.
No one utters a word, the boat glides on its course peacefully
and inaudibly, and the tones of the harmonica, borne by the
night-wind, alone vibrate in silvery strains over the serene, faintly
quivering water. Everything lies in a sort of dreamy half-light,,
and the lake reflects the scene, dimmed and subdued like an echo.
The total effect stands alone in its solitude, peace, and freshness.
In Munich Skredsvig delighted every one in 1891 with two-
works. In one which he called " Evening Rest " a rustic in
front of a log-house, with his hands thrust into his pockets,,
was playing with a cat in the grass, which fawned at his feet
Described in so many words, it sounds like the subject of a
genre picture. But in the painting one was only conscious of the
scent of the hay and the field-flowers, the sentiment of evening
peace. The second work, "Water-lilies," has not its fellow for
familiar lyrical poetry ; three pale lilies are 'floating in the dusk
upon quiet water, and that is all. But out of this Skredsvig^
created a picture expressing a mood, and one of profound feeling,,
such as the old painters never knew. A more recent work made
a somewhat startling effect. Uhdc and Soeren Kierkegaard stood
godfather to his "Christ as Healer of the Sick," but Skredsvig
went further than Uhde, by not merely transplanting his peasants-
into the nineteenth century, but the Saviour Himself In the
foreground to the right a countryman is driving his sick wife
past in a cart. Straight opposite, an old woman is spreading a
carpet for the Son of Man to walk upon. From the background
He is seen advancing in the Sunday garb of a Norwegian artisaa
with a little round hat in His hand. Children are led to Him,,
and He blesses them tenderly. Poor and simple folk are standing
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395
round, amongst whom there, is one who is like a Protestant
minister. Of late years this religious painting has been con-
siderably abused, but Skredsvig made atonement by the deep-
earnestness with which everything was touched, as well as by a
narvet^ recalling the old masters. A trait of benevolence ran
through the picture, something biblical and patriarchal, far re-
moved from that suggestion of malicious narvetd with which
Jean Beraud profanes the sacred legends.
During his years of study under Lindenschmit Et7t/ Peterssen
made a beginning with historical anecdotes. "The Death of
Corvis Uhlfeld," " A Scholar in his Study," and " Christian VI.
signing a Sentence of Death," were all good costume-pictures
more or less in the style at that time affected by Georg von
Rosen in Munich. A group from the last-mentioned picture
he repeated in the composition " Women in Church," which
has the appearance of an early Habermann ; in colour it is-
Venetian, and it is old German in dress. Love of the Venetian
colourists, whom he had already studied with enthusiasm in
the Pinakothek, induced him to make a journey to Italy. He
was in Rome in 1879, and painted there a " Kiss of Judas,"
under the influence of Titian, as well as various altar-pieces-
for Norwegian churches : a " Repentant Magdalene," an " Adora-
tion of the Shepherds," and a " Christ in Emmaus." A picture
called "A Siesta in Sora," a group of fine Italian artisans,,
showed that he was b^inning to treat modem life. In his
" Piazza Montenara " he produced a vivid and airy picture of
the Roman streets. And since settling down in his home
once more, in 1883, he has become a delicate and expressive
modern landscapist His "Laundresses" was, in 1889, one
of the best pictures of the Munich Exhibition, gleaming
with exuberant colour and a dazzling glow of sunshine. Irt
another pictiu*e he represented nymphs, in a landscape by^
night, leaning against a tree, and softly touched by the sub-
dued light Yet in his "Woodland Lake" of 1891 he achieved
a still more striking effect without the aid of such mytho-
logical beings. The still water, over which the trees leaned so
dreamily, was an enchanted lake, casting its spell over every^
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396 MODERN PAINTING
one and holding him fast, a lake full of quiet harmonies and
soft dreams.
And, in general, this exquisite delicacy is the note of Norwegian
landscapes. These same angular, unvarnished artists who face
objects with such opened-eyed frankness in their figure-pictures
show great refinement of feeling in their landscapes. Their
predecessors had glorified only what was romantically wild or
meteorologically interesting in nature as she is in Norway, and had
•cultivated, even more than their German colleagues, that superficial
panoramic painting which blazed out with sun, moon, and stars
to excite the interest of tourists. What attracted them was
the element of strangeness in scenery, and what drew others to
their pictures was the interest of an album of travel. All those
midnight scenes glaring in blue and red, those fantastic beauties
of the Lofoten, those flaming tournaments between sunset and
dawn, were merely striking as curious phenomena very accurately
rendered in an impersonal style. These landscape-painters
supplemented Baedeker and corroborated Passai^e. They were
an inciting cause of journeys to Norway. Otherwise their works
bore the stamp of ordinary prose ; they amazed people and
instructed them, but they could barely have existed apart from
the mere interest of subject-matter. The modems, who were
as composed as the earlier painters were explosive, discovered
Norway in its work-a-day garb, the poetry of winter and the
charm of spring. For them Norway was no longer the land of
wild romance, of Alpine peaks effectively lit up by the limelight
man, nor the land of phenomena through which nature only
speaks with an accent of vehemence, but the land of brightness,
sunshine, snow, and silence. Norwegian landscapes are, indeed,
characterized by their remarkable and apparently exaggerated
clearness of atmosphere, a rarefied, shining, transparent atmo-
sphere where all colours join in a revel of brightness. The sea,
the houses, the snowfields, the men and women in their motley
garb, seem to sparkle and flash in the most dazzling tones ; every-
thing is clear, aerial, and full of quivering light. Yet they are
exceedingly simple; it almost seems as if the painters beheld
a younger earth with fresher eyes than our own. The elder
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NORWAY 397
generation painted the dash of waterfalls and the devastating
might of the elements ; but nature, as seen by these moderns, is
as peaceful as it is solitary. In Danish landscapes she seems to
stand closely bound to man and to be his friend. She resignsi
as it were, her majesty, to nestle round the dwellings of men, and
is the medium of their intercourse. But in Norway everything
lies in ghostly peace, as silent as the grave: nature is austere
and vast, and all the works of men emerge like something forlorn
and exceptional One artist celebrates the marvellous splendour
of autumn, when the yellow leaves of the lithe birches sparkle
like gold and their slender white stems gleam like silver. Another
renders lonely lakes, where no boat furrows the water, no human
being is visible, and no shout is heard, where not even a bird
is to be seen, nor a fish darting to the surface. Here the sun
is sinking clear and cold ; in its parting it does not shed the
faintest gleam of purple over the land. There it is winter,
which has enveloped the country in a great, glittering mantle
of snow. The spectator feels how sunny and how cold it is in
these Northern latitudes, how the air chills you to the jnarrow^
let the sea be ever so blue. The atmosphere has an icy trans-
parency, the snow a glittering whiteness. If it is through no
accident that the greatest landscape-painters of the century
have been city-bred, it is also comprehensible that the most
delicate pictures of spring should have been painted in wintry
Norway. The longer the spring is in coming, the more men
know how to prize it, — that spring which is not as ours, but a
season less adorned, a season without luxuriance, though full of
fragrance and moist, fertile warmth, a season rich in fine, tender,,
yellowish verdure ; spring as it is only known in islands, where
the freshness of the sea calls forth a succulent and yet pallid
and colourless vegetation.
Bom in 1833 i" Tidemand's birthplace, Mandal, Amandus^
Nilson was probably the first to discover all these refinements
of Norwegian scenery. Having arrived at Diisseldorf in i86r>
he moved at first entirely upon the lines of Gude. But after
he had returned to Christiania in 1868, where Johann Tfuodor
Eckersbergy who died early, worked with him at the time, Nilson
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398 MODERN PAINTING
entirely altered his style. While the Diisseldorfian Norwegians
turned out their works for the market, Nilson submitted himself,
in a simple and direct manner, to the influences of Norwegian
scenery, in its barren meagreness and its grave and severe
melancholy. At first he thought himself obliged to make con-
cessions to the reigning taste, " rounded off " his pictures, and
robbed them of the freshness of work done in the first jet But
when he ventured to " retain the result of the sketch " the younger
men began to honour him as a forerunner. Nilson is the real
autochthonous Norwegian landscape-painter who, without having
■ever come in touch with the Fontainebleau school, was never-
theless the first to make their principles valid in the North.
On his journey for study through South Norway, where he had
lived as a child, he painted in a robust and downright style
barren mountains, and lonely, poverty-stricken houses, and hills
with a few pines forcing their way from the stony soil In
contrast with the works of Gude, which are " seen " in a cool
and positive fashion, and painted well, in the style of the old
masters, though they display no trace of temperament, a sombre
and often moody poetry, which is nevertheless full of force
and energy, runs through those of Nilson. He loves the poetry
of waste places. A melancholy twilight rests over his cold,
snowy landscapes, over his coasts, where the weary waves at
last find rest, over his silent strands unbroken by a human
habitatioa He takes a peculiar delight in painting black autumn
nights, where the dark pastures seem asleep, and the murmuring
waves sing a lullaby. The emptiness of a vanished world broods
over his pictures, the love of nature felt by a man who is happiest
in the autumnal season and at night.
Fritz Thaulow^ whose portrait has been painted by Carolus
Duran — it is that of an attractive-looking man with fair hair —
introduced the refinements of French technique. His favourite
phases of nature are the glitter of snow, the clear air of winter, and
the sparkle of ice; one envies him the delightful nooks which
he discovered in the environs of Christiania. The usual elements
in Thaulow's pictures are little red houses, lying deep in snow,
with great shining patches of sunlight, a clear sky, and, perhaps,
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399
1^ "^^BSk^- ^
%F%
Muntch: HaMfstOngl,}
Thaulow: "Thaw in Norway."
a peasant woman coquettishly attired, and walking in boots
which are so gigantic that they must have some special name ;
or else a river half choked with snow, or snow and nothing beside.
And how admirably this eternal snow is painted ! How blue and
still the air is above ! Not a cloudlet floats in the azure of the
sky. A feeling of boundless solitude is expressed in his works,
a feeling such as steals over the wanderer in the high mountains
despite the brightness of the snow. He awakens a longing for
those lonely fields of the North. And this although he is never
in a proper sense expressive of " mood." In Munich one of his
pictures once hung beside that of a Scotch painter. In the latter
there was a deep and fervent passion for nature, and glowing
splendour, and joy without reserve, melancholy, sensuousness,
and reverie; in the former clear and peaceful sunshine over an
open plain, stillness, health, childlike simplicity, brightness of
vision, quietude.
As Thaulow had the art of rendering winter, Gerhard Munthe
knew the secret of depicting the amenity of spring, its young
verdure, its budding leaves — depicting it by a painting of
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MODERN PAINTING
Com. dt9 Beaux-Arts,]
Weremskiold: **A Norwegian Peasant Girl."
[Dujardin Mio.
nature penetrated through and through with a feeling for its
moods. One s^^s in his pictures only soft, green meadows
gleaming tenderly in a pale light of noon, great cherry-trees
white with blossom, hanging beeches, and green fences — so
green that they seem to have been painted with the damp
air itself Here and there a still, silver-grey pool twinkles
between the trees, or a log-house painted with deep red emerges
brightly.
Dissert, who returned to Norway from Carlsruhe in 1876,.
was won back from Gude, and turned to the painting of lofty
cliffs. He delights in naked masses of rock, stretching out in
brown monotony and shrouded in thick mist, glaciers, and
Norwegian waterfalls. Skramstadt^ who was in Diisseldorf and
Munich in 1873, has devoted himself to the scenery of Ostland^
and loves chill moods of autumn, clear, ringing winter days^
and snowfields stretching to the horizon. For Northern Norway
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401
Gunnar Berg was in
painting what Jonas
Lie was in literature.
On a mountain peak
high in the Lofoten
he has his studio,
the most northerly
in the world, fas-
tened by great
cramp-irons to the
rock. Here it is
that Berg, a true
descendant of the
defunct race of Vi-
kings, paints, come
frost or rain, his
fresh and boldly
naturalistic pictures.
Mention must like-
wise be made of the
dazzling sea - shore
landscapes of Karl Edvard Dircks^ and the ploughed fields,
saturated with light and exhaling the smell of the earth, which
are painted by Eylof Soot, The animal painter Carl Uckermann^
who, after leaving Munich in 1880, became a pupil of Van
Marckc in Paris, continues the good traditions of Troyon.
Harriet Backer paints convincing pictures of interiors : blond
girls reading by lamplight in rooms which are stained blue.
Kitty Kielland^ a sister of the author of that name, delights
in lonely woods, little white, red-tiled houses, and dreamy trees
casting reddish and pale green reflections on the clear water of
still pools. A sense of great peace underlies the seascapes of
Hansteen : rainy phases of morning on the fjord of Christiania.
Grey is the sea, grey the clouds, grey and leaden the sky, and
all these greys unite with the gloomy atmosphere in creating
a grave and deep harmony.
But Norway is not alone the land of snowfields, but of
Scribffurs MagOMint.}
Werenskiold: Bjornstjerne BjSrnson.
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Werenskiold: From Asbj6rnsen*s Fairy Tales.
fairy tales also, of giants and dragons, of nixies and the
daughters of c^es. On this ground of the sagas Erik Weren-
skiold stands out as the most poetic and creative of Norwegian
artists. As a painter he made his advance slowly and very
cautiously. Upon the little genre pictures which he painted
under Lindenschmit in Munich there followed fresh oi>en-air
pictures in Paris : " The Meeting," that summer scene, so ex-
pressive of individual mood, with the young peasant lad and
the girl greeting each other as they pass in the meadow ; " The
Prodigal Son," sitting ragged and famished upon a bench in
his father's garden. In the Munich Exhibition of 1890 there
was a simple but deeply poetic "Mood of Evening," which
was only pictorially effective by the great contrast of the
broad green plain and the clear ether. Children are walking
in a meadow, and a lonely cot rises in the middle distance.
A second picture, now to be found in the National Gallery of
Christiania, represented a peasant burial with peculiar earnestness,
depth, and truthfulness. In a churchyard bare of all adorn-
ment, overgrown with grass and weeds, and enclosed by walls,
above which were to be seen the tops of trees and a wide
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403
Cop0Hhag9M: Gyldtndalsk,']
Wsrsnskiold: From AsbjSrnsen's Fairy Tales.
g^een land, there stand a few peasants in their shirt-sleeves,
holding the pickaxes and shovels with which they have just been
filling in a grave. A young man, not wearing a particularly
ecclesiastical garb, is. reading out a prayer. There is no ex-
citement, and no cry of sorrow is raised. These large, robust
men have done their Christian duty, and now they are all going
back to their customary work. A still, warm summer air
quivers upon the hills, and rests gently upon the quiet gathering.
But Werenskiold is also an excellent portrait-painter, and his
likenesses of Kitty Kielland, the composer Edvard Grieg, and
the novelist BjOrnson are, in their unvarnished simplicity, to
be reckoned amongst the best in Norwegian art That of
Bjomson was, perhaps, a little forced, or, at any rate, showed
only one side of Bjomson's individuality : in this portrait he is
the great agitator, the tribune of the people, the mention of
whose name, according to Brandes, is like hoisting the national
flag of Norway. But in these hard eyes, these tightly closed
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MODERN PAINTING
Edelfelt: Pasteur in his Laboratory.
(By p^rmtMion of Msaars. Bo$«8»od, Valadon & Co., the
ownen of ths copyright.)
lips, and this air of con-
centrated energy, the
tender and sensitive poet
and the noble and warm-
hearted friend are not to
be found. These, how-
ever, are not the works
which fully display the
importance of Weren-
skiold. He is only com-
pletely himself when he
has a pencil in his banc}.
The fairy tales of Ander-
sen, the stories of Christian
Asbjornsen and Jorgen
Moe, which were pub-
lished by Gyldendalsk in
Copenhagen with draw-
ings by Werenskiold, contain the best that has been done in
Norway in the way of illustration. In their bizarre union of elfish
fancy and rustic humour, these plates have caught the spirit of the
Northern tale in a way which is perfectly marvellous. Werenskiold
makes you believe whatever he pleases. He has given the
impossible and invisible an air of probability with such con-
vincing narvetd that one is tempted to believe that the simple
spirit of olden times lives in the man himself. Fairies and
monsters he has seen hovering upon waste and heath, and
giants and enchanted princesses dwelling in strongholds of the
bygone world. Dreamland and reality he rules over with the
same ease, so that he draws the spectator irresistibly into his
magic circle. Black and white suffice him for the expression
of all the secrets of light. The interior of peasants' cottages
and wide, open nature are rendered alike by a few strokes
with the whole force of realism ; and yet everything is enveloped
in a dim atmosphere of dreams, from which the supernatural
arises of its own accord. The hill above the flord where the
three princesses sit and dream is in Norway, but it is in
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NORWAY
405
fairyland too. The
little birch-woods,
with their shining
boughs, may be seen
in every Norwegian
landscape, but in
Werenskiold's draw-
ings they are like
ms^ic groves, where
the little silvery
trees bear golden
leaves. With as
much fancy as in-
timacy of feeling,
he knows how to
approach these le-
gends from all sides,
expressing their
comicality and their
horrors, their child-
ish laughter and
their virgin grace,
the drollness of
gnomes and the
brutality of three-headed giants, the primitive fantasticality of
fabulous animals dwelling in desolate, rocky wastes, the elfin
delicacy of creatures pervading the air.
The art of Finland is an appanage of that of Sweden, and
has gone through the same French training. Its leading repre-
sentative is Edelfelt^ by no means a vehement force in art, but
a graceful and many-sided painter, who combines the healthy
brightness of Scandinavian vision with the coquettish chic of Paris,
and the pictorial sensitiveness of the French with that irresist-
ible breath of virginal freshness only to be found in nationalities
which have never been worn out The work which first made
him known was a portrait of Pasteur, whom he painted examin-
ing a preparation in his laboratory. In "The Women in the
Paris: Boussod-Valadon.']
Edelfelt: ''Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene."
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4o6 MODERN PAINTING
Churchyard " he produced a pretty picture of the life of the
Finnish people. In " Boys Bathing " he painted the swing of
the waves, like Zorn ; the setting sun, in this picture, cast its
last rays across quiet waters, and played gently over the elastic
young frames of the bathers. His " Laundry," a harmony of
yellow on white, was one of the pearls of the Munich Exhibi-
tion of 1893, a"d ^^ "Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene" he
followed the lead of Uhde, and treated the theme as if it were
a Finnish legend. Christ stands in a Northern landscape, and
at His feet there kneels, not the splendid courtesan of the gospel,,
but a poor peasant woman in that heavy nun-like costume
worn in the Baltic provinces of Russia ; but indeed Finland
belongs to the Empire of the Czar.
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CHAPTER XLIII
RUSSIA
(In collaboration with Alexander Benois, St. Petersburg)
The beginnings of Russian fainting in the eighteenth century : Levitzky,
Rokotav, Baravikovs^.—The period of Classicism : Egorov, UgrH-
mov, Andreas Ivanov, Theodor Tolstoi^ Or est Kiprensky, — The first
painters of soldiers and peasants : Orlavsky, Veneiianov* — The
historical painters : BrUloVj Bassin^ Schamschin^ Kapkov, Flavitzky,
MolUr, Hendrik SiemiradMky, Bruni, Neff, — Realistic reaction:
Alexander Ivanov, Sarjanko, — The genre painters : Sternberg ^
Stschedrovsky, Tschernyschev, Morosov, Ivan Sokolov, TrutovsJ^^
Timm, Popov, Shuravlev, Fedotov. — The painters with a complaint
against society : Perov, Pukirev, Korsuchin^ Prj'anischnikov,
Savitzkyt Lemoch, Verestchagin.—Ths landscape-painters: Stsche-
drin, Lebedev, Vorobiev, Rabus, Lagorio, Horavsky, Bogoliubov^
Mestschersky, Aivasovsky, TscherneMoff, Galaktionov, Schischkin,
Baron Klodt, Orlovsky, Fedders, Volkov, Vassiliev, Levitan,
ITuindshi, Savrassov, Sudhovshy, VassnetMov, Albert Benois,
Svjetoslavshy. — Tfie naturalistic figure^icture : Suertschhov, Peter
Soholov.—The wanderers : Ivan Kramskoi, Constantin and Vladimir
Makovsky, Tschistjakov, Schwari, Gay, Surikov, Elias RSpin,
A STRANGE fable has currency amongst the Russian people ;
it is rather Oriental than Slav in its colour, and was pro-
bably brought by the Mongols from the highland desert to the
lowland Steppes. Among these Steppes, runs the fable, a magic
plant raises somewhere — who knows where ? — its tender blossom,
everlastingly green, deathless, and freed from all the laws of
growth and decay. So long as it grows and blossoms on the
earth it cannot be perceived, for the reed-grass and the flowers
of the Steppes lift their heads higher and hide this tender plant
from view. But the eternally green flower becomes visible to
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4o8 MODERN PAINTING
any one who travels over the bald Steppes in the sad autumn,
and even from a distance its fragrance assures him that it is
the magic flower which he has seen. For this fragrance is
peculiar to itself, and ineffably rich and sweet; it has not its
like upon earth, to say nothing of its equal. And if any one
breathes it the whole world is changed for him. He under-
stands everything ; what is dumb speaks to him, and what has
speech cannot lie. Beneath the sound of a hypocritical phrase
he penetrates to the most profoundly secret thoughts ; animal,
tree, and rock talk to him with tones that have a meaning ; he
overhears nature, and learns how she breathes and works and
creates ; he hears the song of the stars in their nightly courses.
Yet every one becomes sad who has drunk in this fragrance ;
every one becomes sad, for — say the poor folk in the great plain
— it is not a joyous song which vibrates through the universe.
Now the great Russian authors have wandered out in the
autumn, and have sought the magic flower and found it They
have understood the song and grown wise, and tender and
pitiful. "The sorrow of created things" has passed throi^h
them like a shudder.
And, in truth, it was under the star of pessimism that mystical,
credulous Russia first struck a grandiose and original note in the
spiritual concord of the nations.
The French Naturalists wished to create "human documents."
Their aim was the objective representation of naked nature.
Each individual man, they taught, was a material, which, when
brought into contact with others, entered into definite relation-
ships, and it was the business of the author, as a man of
science, to represent their character. In the hands of the
Russians the living, suffering human spirit celebrated its new
birth after a long mortification. The monotonous desolation of
the brown Steppes spreading beneath a grey sky, the lament-
able existence of man in a country over the spiritual life of
which the thought of Siberia rested like a dark veil, induced
an infinite compassion for humanity. Never has the world
heard such repining, sympathetic, sorrowfully resigned, and
deep and tender tones, as Turgeniev, Dostoievski, and Tolstoi
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RUSSIA 409s
reserved for their downtrodden heroes : " poor people, deadened
souls, idiots, branded and debased and possessed."
But has any one of the Russian painters heard this song?"
In these days there is such a fervent longing for spiritual origin-
ality, freedom from scholastic forms, and youthful inwardness of
feeling. The world is eager for something naTve, for a natural
art born in a country where there are no museums, and amongst
simple people ; it desires picturies like none that have been
seen elsewhere, it has need of a stream of fresh life and a new
taste in art. The Russian authors are Russian in every drop-
of their blood. Nowhere does the bond between the written
word and the most secret sorrows of the nation seem more*
closely formed. They sympathize with their own race in the
most direct fashion, and the beating of its pulse is also theirs.
Everything in their work is pervaded with the odour of their
native soil, with the sap of popular life. Their feeling for nature
adheres so closely to the secret working of the elements, and
the atmosphere is so charged with the germs of a spiritual life,
peculiar in character, that in Russia, above all countries, one
might expect an art allied to the sturdiest sentiment of nation-
ality, an art laying bare the quivering nerves of the people,-
an art in which violent sobbing would be united with mocking,
peals of merriment, blithe laughter with gloomy funereal bells,,
feverish unbridled wildness with sorrowful abnegation, the acrid
smell of brandy with devout mysticism. One dreams of strange
things : knouts and sacred pictures, desolate steppes, plaintive
gipsy songs and sombre pine- woods, moon and mist, death and
the grave, longing and affliction, the parching July sun and rigid
seas of ice ; men whose days go by in vain monotony ; hollow,
broken, somnolent lives which come and pass away without needs
or desires, like grass by the wayside, regarded by no one and by
no one pitied ; bold flaming spirits famishing before the pictures
of saints in religious stupor ; high-born aristocrats casting riches
and titles aside, to find their lost peace of mind by working in the
sweat of their brow ; Cossacks bounding upon fiery horses across
the endless, sunny meadow-plains ; and peasant children crouching:
round the glimmering fire and telling each other ghost-stories.
VOL. III. 27
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410 MODERN PAINTING
But art has to reckon with more difficult conditions than
literature. And indeed perfect artistic form is wanting even
in the works of Russian authors. In a sense, Tolstoi and
Dostoievski can do no more with the inkpot than any other
educated man who can give clear expression to his thoughts.
What distinguishes them is not their facility, but their naturalness
and simplicity, which so entirely retain the directness in con-
ception, and the freshness and vividness of the first draught,
that one scarcely thinks of the manner in which their works
have been produced. A French author would have polished
the mere shell of his book in a different fashion, though he would
have rendered the kernel less sweet and savoury; and he would
liave divested his ideas of their elementary force. In art, too, the
spirit is not fuUgrown before the body has matured ; thought and
feeling do not become self-conscious before the outward frame has
been developed into clear and sensuous forms. It is the acquired
mastery of technique which is the first condition for the minting
of a spiritual individuality. But Russian painting has not
yet arrived at this subtilized aesthetic stage. With barbarism
on one side and civilization on the other, it wavers between
the blind imitation of foreign models and the stiff*, rude, and
awkward expression of inborn emotion. Some have studied
diligently under foreign masters, and lost their individual character
in following an alien style ; and in studiously pursuing the
academical pattern they have wilfully suppressed every personal
note. In the case of others it is evident that they had some-
thing to express, feelings and desires of their own, the special
secrets of their strange race, but they failed to body them
forth ; they plagued themselves, stuttering helplessly in an in-
tractable language to which they were not habituated. Never-
theless Russia, during the past hundred years, has contributed
to the general development of painting a creditable total of
artistic power. Whereas the earlier period was merely receptive
of jejune impressions of foreign styles, artists are now in a better
position to make something of their own from the result
Amongst the discoverers and initiators of European art there
is certainly no Russian name to be found, but there is usually
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a Russian to be jnet with amongst the followers of men of other
nationalities who have broken new ground. And in the annual
^'wandering exhibitions," as they are called, there is an increase
of pictures which seem the heralds of an approaching outburst
in Russian art From parasitic works of borrowed sentiment
Russian painting rises to national, barbaric strength, utterly
wanting in the discipline that comes of taste ; and out of this evil
-originality it rises again, and, in individual cases, highly refined
and well-balanced performances are produced — works in which
the spirit of the people is felt none the less to vibrate. That
is more or less the course of development which has been run
through in the nineteenth century.
What was produced in Russia before the year 1700 is only
•of value for those making researches in Byzantine art The
•connection between the Empire of the Czar and the West dates
from Peter the Great This prince wanted European pictures
for his palaces arranged in the European style — ceiling-pieces
and wall-paintings — and for the execution of them he summoned
from foreign parts a number of mediocre painters, who adapted
in a workmanlike fashion for Russian necessities the courtly
allegories invented by Lebrun. Dannhauer, Grooth, the elder
Lampi, and afterwards Toqu^, Rotari, and others, were employed
as portrait-painters at the Court of St. Petersburg. For the
genesis of a "national Russian art" their appearance was, of
■course, ineffectual. The Asiatic Colossus merely received a
superficial Western varnish. Nevertheless the barbarians acquired
a taste for pictures, luxury, elegance, and refinement As a
result commissions were multiplied During the fabulous splen-
dour which flooded the Court and was in favour with the
aristocracy under Elizabeth, whole regiments of artists were
needed. Demand creates supply. And so amongst the crowd
of foreigners there emerged native artists, some of whom gave
a good account of themselves beside their French comrades.
In particular Levitzky^ the first remarkable painter of the
Empire of the Russias, may be reckoned amongst the best por-
traitists of the eighteenth century. As a colourist and master
of characterization he does not stand upon the same footing
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412 MODERN PAINTING
with Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Graflf, but his likenesses-
might easily be mistaken for those of Madame Vigte-Lebrun or
Rafael Mengs. His contemporary, Rokotov, is more pedestrian
and less vivid. The fine portrait of Catherine II. by his pupil,.
Borovikovsky^ which represents the Empress in a plain morning-
dress, passing through the park of Zarskoe Selo, accompanied
by her favourite dog, makes a specially striking effect in the
private collection in Moscow where it is to be found. His
church-pictures are void of any religious feeling, as is always
the case in those of the eighteenth century ; but they are flowing
in line, effectively decorative, and show great taste in colour.
Through mere intercourse with the foreign masters whom,
they saw working around them, they had all three formed them-
selves on the style of the old painters. In 1757, still during
the reign of the Empress Elizabeth, Russia made a further
advance in the cultivation of art : the St. Petersburg Academy
of Arts was founded. It was the time when Rousseau's-
t,fnile had created the wildest confusion of ideas, and an
exceedingly strange programme was accordingly taken up. The
ground-floor of the Academy was occupied by an infant-schooL.
Boys of from three to five were taken there, being sometimes,
brought from the foundling hospital. After they had gone:
through the elementary course of teaching they entered the
more advanced school, being then from eleven to thirteen years
of age. There they were drilled to become artists, and finally
sent abroad, where Mengs and David stood at the zenith of
their glory. In St Petersburg young Russians were compelled
with the knout to make Oriental reverences before Poussin and
the Bolognese. When they came to Rome they transferred,
their servile veneration to the two younger princes of painting
whom the world delighted to honour. And so the Classicism,
of Mengs and David — icy rigidity and tediousness aiming at
style — found its way into Russia. Like a new Minerva, armed,
with diplomas and arrayed in academical uniform, Russian art
descended to the earth, ready-made. Artists complimented each
other on being a Russian Poussin, a Caracci, a Raphael, or —
highest honour of all — a Guido Reni : they painted Jupiter^
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RUSSIA
413
Achilles, Ulysses,
Hercules, Socrates,
and Priam ; that is
to say, wax-dolls,
-provided with friz-
zled hair and yellow
and blue togas,
moving majestic-
ally in bare land-
scapes, painted in
the style of Valen-
-ciennes.
These produc-
tions of Egorov^
Ugruniov, and
Jlndreas Ivanov —
honoured artists in
their lifetime — look
down from the walls
•of the Hermitage,
sad and silent in
these days, like
reduced heroes of
Cornelius in a state
of emaciation.
They were one and all stiff and buckram painters making a
frightful abuse of Greek and Roman names, and staring with
their dull Mongol eyes into the blithe world of antiquity.
Count Tkeodor Tolstoi^ the sculptor and designer of medallions,
is the only one amongst them who makes an oasis in the
wilderness of French Classicism resembling that made by
Prudhon in France. His illustrations to Bogdanovitsch's trans-
lation of the tale of Psyche take a place immediately below
Prudhon's drawings in grace, charm, and aristocratic elegance.
He neither imitated nor troubled himself about academical for-
tnulas, but felt like a Greek ; and his compositions are fresh
-and delicate where others were stiff and formal. But, as a
ij
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f
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i
m
_i_ti
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lUiktM 9C.
BoROviKOvsKY : The Empress Catherine II.
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414
MODERN PAINTING
genuine painter of
the epoch, the only
one of them who
survives is Orest
Kiprensky, a man of
naive artistic temper
who had a delight
in colour and was
inspired by Rubens
and Van Dyck, and
not by RaphaeU
Poussin,and Mengs.
When one comes, in
the Russian section
of the Hermitage,,
across Kiprensky's
portrait of his father
— an obese, cherry-
cheeked old gentle-
man with goggle
eyes, wrapped in
fur and standing;
broad - legged with
a stick in his hand — one fancies that one has unearthed a
Rubens in the thick of these tedious, dismal Classicists. Almost
all his works have unusual breadth of technique, rich and
liquid tone, bold drawing, and astonishing characterization.
Very fine is his portrait of himself in the Florentine Uffizi
galleries, a masterpiece of energetic conception, with colouring
which recalls the old masters ; and to this must be added his
portrait in the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts of Captain
Davydov, the famous poet and military author, who as Colonel
of a Hussar regiment played such an important part in 1814
under Blucher in the war against the French.
The Napoleonic campaigns brought about the beginnings of
realism in Russia as in Germany and France, and what Gros
was in Paris and Albrecht Adam in Munich, Orlovsky was ia
KiPRENSKY : Captain Davydov.
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RUSSIA
41S
Orlovsky : " A Cossack Bivouac."
the Empire of the Russias. Born in Poland, but working
throughout his life in Russia, Orlovsky had, like Adam, not a
little of the temperament of a rough infantry soldier ; as a boy
he had seen the gaily accoutred troops defiling past for the war,
and as a young man he had himself taken part in many a skirmish.
When he came home he painted with great verve the things he
had witnessed on the field. The aesthetic connoisseurs of St
Petersburg accepted him half against their will, and, searching
for a title through the great archives of art, as was their usage,
they called him the Russian Wouverman, which at that time
was not intended to imply high praise.
Having had a Wouverman, they soon had a Teniers also.
F'or Russia Venezianov has much the same importance as Biirkel for
Germany. Having been born in 1779, he lived at a time when genre
was considered the lowest grade of art, although it was extremely
easy to gain a reputation equal to that of Poussin and Raphael ;
indeed it was only necessary to draw in due form after plaster
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MODERN PAINTING
Venezianov: "The Threshing-floor."
casts, and reproduce old pictures as accurately as possible. Never-
theless Venezianov, without troubling himself about the reigning
precepts in aesthetics, turned to the representation of peasant
life with the utmost delight in his subject and the most ardent
striving after truth ; and this, remember, was in an epoch when
the Russian peasant was sold like a beast, and the poor, rough,
and dirty devil had no picturesque costume of his own. Such
an abrupt entry into art makes Venezianov a very remarkable
person, and indeed the true father of Russian painting. And,
although he was inspired by English copper-engravings, this only
makes it the more surprising that, instead of falling into anecdotic
and narrative painting, he should have aimed at the most un-
varnished reproduction of what he had actually seen. His
pictures, it is true, are cold and heavy in colouring ; they have
not the vividness of the old Dutch masters, but the frigidness
of Debucourt and Boilly. Nevertheless they give pleasure by
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RUSSIA 417
the loving manner in which they are treated, by the delicate
observation which they display now and then, and, above all,
by the intense earnestness with which he showed a generation
of eclectics that the salvation of art lay in truth and nature
alone. At the same time Sylvester Stschedrin, a powerful painter
who revealed a good deal of inward temperament, emancipated
himself from the conventional landscape of Poussin. Realism
was furtively gaining ground, a national Russian school was
going through the process of fermentation, and the awkward,
lazy camel began to bestir itself at last.
But the phase of historical painting had also to be overcome.
Just as in Germany the healthy art of Peter Hess and Biirkel
was long overshadowed by the glittering histrionic vehemence
of Piloty, so, after 1834, the era of great historical canvases
came into existence in Russia.
For many years past rumours had come from Rome to the
-effect that a young man of genius, Karl Brulov, many of whose
glorious "revelations of colour" had been already seen, had
completed a picture over which all Italy was in a fever of excite-
ment And in this at least there was no exaggeration. In
the whole history of art there is scarcely an example of such
a dazzling success as that achieved by Briilov's picture "The
Fall of Pompeii." Substantial volumes might be compiled from
the numberless eulogies which appeared in Italian journals. To
compare the young Russian with Michael Angelo and Raphael
was a thing which seemed faint praise to the Roman critics.
People took their hats off to him, as they did to Gu^rin in Paris ;
lie was allowed to cross the boundaries of states without a
passport, for his fame had penetrated even to the custom-house
officials. When he appeared in the theatre the public rose from
their seats to greet the master; and a dense crowd gathered
round the door of his house or followed him wherever he went, to
rejoice in the contemplation of such a man of genius. Sir Walter
Scott, who was then the idol of the Russians, had sat for an
hour in the painter's studio examining the work with the greatest
attention without uttering a word, until he at last declared that
Briilov had not painted a mere picture, but an epic. And even
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Karl BrOlov.
Cammuccini, the ironical David
of the Itah'ans, called Briilov a
colossus.
At length, having won a
European fame in this fashion,
the picture arrived in Russia.
The public was excited to the
highest pitch both by the
notices in papers and the ac-
counts of travellers. Of course
the enthusiasm of the Italians,
who were still reckoned the
only artistic nation by the grace
of God, was enough to silence
criticism. People streamed in
masses to the Academy where the masterpiece was exhibited,
with the firm determination of admiring it, and they were not
in the least disappointed.
A colossal canvas with falling houses and swarms of people
painted over life-size, a motley chaos of luminous colours, where
" the fire of Vesuvius and the flash of the lightning seemed to
have been stolen from heaven," could not fail to make a thrill-
ing impression upon people who had hitherto been able to enjoy
nothing but dead and dreary compositions. Briilov was said
to have eclipsed Raphael and Michael Angelo, and he alone
had the art of combining awful tragedy with the noblest beauty.
And language such as this was not merely used by petty
journalists. Following the example given by Scott, the greatest
geniuses of Russia went one beyond the other in the cult of
Briilov : Gogol wrote an article filled with unmeasured praise ;
Puschkin flung himself upon his knees before the painter
imploring him for a sketch; Shukovsky spent whole days in
Briilov's studio, and spoke of his religious pictures as " divinely
inspired visions."
At the present time this enthusiasm is as hard to understand
as that which was accorded about the same epoch to the works
of Delaroche, Wappers, and Gallait. Of course there can be
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RUSSIA 421
no doubt that Briilov's " Fall of Pompeii " has an historical
importance in Russian art By breaking the monotony of
Classicism with a loud fanfare, it awakened a sense for colour,
and directed the drowsy attention of the Russian public to
native painting. The interest in art grew stronger ; with every
year a larger number of people began to visit exhibitions, and
the career of Russian painters was followed with eagerness.
But all this gives no measure for an artistic judgment. As
a matter of fact, Briilov's picture was a tame compromise between
Classicism and Romanticism. The public seemed to be receiving
something novel without being called upon to alter its taste, and
it was just this which rendered the painter, like his contem-
porary Delaroche, the favourite of the old and the idol of the
young. Instead of ordinary people and horrible, commonplace
reality, such as Venezianov had painted, there was a pretty
stage-scene with ideal figures elegantly posing. The type in
favour with the Classicists was, certainly, a little altered ;
for in the place of the Antinous and Laocoon heads there was
a mixture of those beloved of Domenichino and that of the
Niobe ; but the fair and lofty ideal of yellowish-white and
brownish-red wax-figures in artificial and theatrical poses was
still held in honour. That worse than mediocre opera of Paccini,
V Ultimo Giomo di Pompejiy had given Briilov the first idea
for his picture. And all his later career was a compromise*
When he returned from Italy the opinion was that his best was
still to come: it was expected that he would execute something
grandiose and bold ; the public was convinced that he was a genius
of worldwide reach, whose every stroke would be a revelation. It
made a mistake, for, defective as it was, " The Fall of Pompeii "
remains the painter's masterpiece. The things which he pro-
duced afterwards were either banal Italian scenes, which scarcely
suffer comparison with those of Riedel, or church pictures, such
as " The Crucifixion " or " The Ascension of the Virgin," which
might be the work of a third-rate Bolognese. Everything about
them is correct, intelligent, well-intentioned, cleverly devised,,
but tiresome and inanimate all the same. Shortly after his
arrival in St. Petersburg he began that colossal picture " The
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422 MODERN PAINTING
Defence of Pskovs," in which he meant to surpass tumaelf. He
worked upon it more than ten years, yet the result was a badly
painted patriotic stage-scene in the braggadocio style of Horace
Vemet. However a few energetic portraits and unassuming
water-colours have survived his tawdry historical pictures.
But none the less lasting and fateful was the influence which
he exerted over the Russian art of his time. The incense offered
to this prince of painters mounted to the heads of other artists.
To be Briilov, to approach Briilov — since to outstrip him seemed
impossible — was the aim of them all. Who cared any more
about Orlovsky or Venezianov ! What dwarfs were such
disciples of the old Dutch masters beside the colossus who had
vaulted to the highest peak of Parnassus with a single bound.
From this time there was in all directions a constant search
after strained effects of light and impossible poses. The ex-
hibitions were flooded with huge compositions. The most varied
periods were chosen from antiquity, the Middle Ages, and
the Bible, but less frequently from Russian history, and they
were all illustrated with the same superficiality, the same glare
of colour, and the same false idealism. Encouraged through
purchases made by the Academy and the Emperor, who wanted
a " grand art," like Ludwig I. and Friedrich Wilhelm IV., and
welcomed by the enthusiastic applause of the great public,
historical painters shot up in denser ranks. BassiUy Scliamschin^
KapkaVy and later Flavitzky and MoUer^ were idols looked up to
upon all sides, though they were absolute nonentities, who, if
they were all added together, would not yield the material neces-
sary for one solitary artist of real personality. One of the most
talented, Hendrik Siemiradzky^ threw himself into panoramic
representations of Greek and Roman antiquity, or spoilt his
tasteful and sunny landscapes by the lifeless puppets with which
he filled them in. Bruni^ who is generally mentioned in the
same breath with Briilov, became the Russian Hippol5^e Flandrin.
He provided church pictures, etc., in particular the ceiling-pieces
of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, in which he added to
the puritanic hue of Overbeck and the frigid Michael-Angelesque
ideal of Cornelius a certain warm, piquant Neo-French elegance.
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RUSSIA 423
Nefff who was considered the greatest colourist after Briilov,
painted with an enervating mawkishness bashful nymphs and
holy saints, who even now have lost nothing of their candied
freshness of colour. Every one of these men awakens a remini-
scence, so that his pedigree can be guessed at once, and his
name entered under the prbper heading. They all bear the
brand of the ruling tendency in Italy, France, Germany. And
painting could only recover when Russia came to a consciousness
that Briilov was not a colossus, and that " The Fall of Pompeii **
was a strained operatic climax, provided with anaemic waxworks,
and not a poem.
The first breach in the citadel of "grand art*' was made
by a few painters who move on lines more or less parallel with
those of the English Preraphaelites. That notable man
Akxander Ivanov^ who has become known in Germany through
a publication of the Berlin Archaeological Institute, had con-
ceived the idea of representing " The Appearance of the Messiah
amongst the People" as early as 1833. In his earlier days
Ivanov was a conscientious, industrious young man, who sub-
missively followed academical precepts, and hardly dreamed of
anything beyond an historical picture in the style of Bruni and
Briilov. But he possessed too great a soul to remain on this
smooth and easy path, he had too serious an idea of the
mission of an artist ; and so stereotyped idealism, balance of
composition, and all those easily acquired matters, which led
so many painters to fame in the age of Classicism, were not
enough to satisfy him. He wanted to create a work which
should place the great moment of history truthfully before the
eyes of men ; he wanted to embody the scene in real accordance
with the spirit of the gospel. There was nothing which seemed
too hard for him in the way of his attainment With the zeal
of a young man, Ivanov, who was then thirty, settled to his
work : he read through everything he could lay his hands
upon, sat whole days in different libraries, starved himself to
buy books, and painted and drew without intermission. Nothing
was to recall to any one's mind composition and plaster-casts,
the stage or the academy. Landscape, human types, and
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424
MODERN PAINTING
^^
• -^*«i<
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IvANOv : " Thb Appearance of the Messiah amongst the People."
underlying idea were to be all true to reality, faithful to the
spirit of history. His work took him more than twenty-five
years. With boundless patience and a faith entirely worthy of
primitive Christianity, he laboured by means of fervid studies
of nature to express everything to the last stroke, just as he
had it in his mind. His effort to be authentic went so far that
he had the intention of going to Palestine to get his ideas of
the scenery upon the very spot, and to study genuine Hebrew:
types. As he had not the means for carrying out this plan,
he repaired, without giving the malaria a thought, to the most
deserted regions of the Campagna, to become familiar with the
aspect of the wilderness ; and every Saturday he went to the
synagogue in Rome to hunt for the most pronounced Jewish^
countenances.
From the standpoint of the present day only a very small
amount of truth has been reached, in spite of all his endeavours.
Much of his work is academical, and, at the first glance, the
picture hardly seems to deviate from other compositions con-
structed according to the Classical ideal and illuminated after
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RUSSIA
42s
IvANov: Study for the Heads of Two Slaves in the "Appearance of
THE Messiah."
the manner of Cornelius. But as soon as one looks into the
detail one understands the artist's intention. There is no
sentiment superficially borrowed from the old masters.* Every-
thing, even the awkward composition, bears the impress of
truthfulness. From the sublime and inspired St. John to the
stupid, hideous slaves the characterization of the different heads
is wonderful, full of serious majesty, conceived in a large and
convincing style, and free from every trace of academical
beauty. There is something which is almost genius in the way
in which Christ has been imagined : He is quiet and composed,,
by no means a beautiful Jupiter, but a hard-featured man, and
at the same time a thrilling, superhuman figure, advancing
towards the people with the lofty bearing of a spiritual presence,,
though His gait is none the less natural. The colouring is
obviously the weakest part of the picture, and has a languid^
dismal appearance beside the dazzling theatrical effects of Briilov.
But the numerous sketches — they are over two hundred — which
VOL. III. 28
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MODERN PAINTING
Ivanov has left in the way
of landscapes or studies of
figures and drapery in oil
and water-colours, throw
peculiar light even upon
his efforts at colour. In
these studies he was one
of the first to practise in
some degree the principle
o{ plein air^ and in many
of his open-air sketches
he shows an understand-
ing of light such as else-
where only Madox Brown
possessed in those years.
But in the large picture
Sarjanko: Mrs. Sokurova. ^^ ^^jj^j ^^ ^^^^j^ ^^^^
mony. The total effect is weak, there is a want of unity,
and the orchestration of the tones is interrupted by discords.
In spite of this, however, there is assured to him in the history
of painting a place of honour amongst the earliest tough and
knotty realists, a place of honour amongst the founders of the
modern intuition of colour.
In the field of portrait- painting Sarjanko was inspired with
similar principles. Every wrinkle, ever>'' little hair, the texture
of the skin, and almost every pore are laboriously and slavishly
reproduced in his likenesses with the pains of a Denner. As a
result of this his works have often the spiritless effect of a
coloured photograph. Nevertheless this austere and merciless
pedantry essentially contributed to the gradual purification of
taste. As a result of such work artists at last began to have
«yes for true and simple nature, and, after the burden of
spurious idealism had been got rid of, the national tendency,
which was begun unobtrusively after the Napoleonic war, was
gradually able to grow to its full strength.
Literature paved the way for it. In 1823 Gribojedov repre-
sented Russian society in his comedy Woe to the Man who is too
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RUSSIA 427
-Clever^ in highly coloured scenes and pithy, energetic verse. In
1832 Puschkin completed his Eugen Onegin, In the same year
the great Gogol came before the public with his Evenings at the
Farm near Dikanka^ in which he gave Russian poetry the ten-
dency towards modern realism in the representation of human
life. It was in this work that he portrayed with a harmless
sense of fun the officials, landlords, and popes of Little Russia,
and their life which runs by so cheerfully in its narrow rounds.
In 1836 his Examiner of Accounts was put upon the stage, a
comedy which was likewise an objurgatory sermon. At the
same time his Russian Tales appeared, as well as his novel Dead
Souls \ in these works he was thoroughly serious and bitter,
giving in all its veracity, and with a terrible force, the very
essence of Russian life in a genuinely Russian form of literature.
Painting followed suit. Previously it was Crusaders, Italians,
Turkish ladies, and views of Constantinople and Naples which
had ruled in exhibitions by the side of the large historical pictures,
but from the end of the thirties artists began to seek their mate-
rials upon Russian soil. It must be admitted that they did this,
at first, only for the purposes of genre painting, which flooded
Europe at the time with its plenitude of sentimental anecdotes.
It was necessary to give pictures a jovial or didactic turn to
attract the attention of the public from the captivating episodes
in history, and the richly coloured and motley pictures of Italian
women, in which people took delight Gogol's intense feeling
for beauty, and healthy, animated naturalism were weakened
into swooning sentimentality which could be used in little bourgeois
stories.
A beginning was, at any rate, made by Sternberg, who died
in Rome at the age of seven-and-twenty. He portrayed peasant
life in " Little Russia " with a good deal of rose-coloured sentiment
but with a sympathetic gift of observation and great technical
dexterity. Stschedrovsky represented types of street-life in St.
Petersburg in a series of energetic lithographs. Tschemyschev,
MorosoVy Ivan Sokolov, Trutovsky^ the pretty though superficial
illustrator Timm, Popov, Shuravlev, and others also appeared with
fresh and unassuming pictures of Russian popular life, x^nd the
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428 MODERN PAINTING
victory of genre painting was decisive when Paul Andreevitsch
Fedotov appeared in the exhibition of 1849 with three pictures,
"The Newly Decorated Knight," "The Major's Match," and
"The Morning after the Wedding." These works have the
importance for Russia which the works of Hogarth have for
England.
Fedotov, the son of poor parents, was born in Moscow in
181 5, and had been an officer in the army before he turned to
painting. Even as a cadet he drew portraits of his comrades
and parade and street-scenes, and when he retired he entered
the class for battle-painting in the St. Petersburg Academy, and
indeed it was the only section of the institution where pupils
came into a certain contact with life. His works of this period,
such as the large water-colour picture "The Admission of the
Grand Duke Michael into the Finnish Regiment of Lifeguards
in 1837," have a plain matter-of-fact style which is more or less
paralleled in the paintings of Franz Kriiger. He has drawn the
rigid, self-satisfied soldiery, in their tight uniforms and absurd
shakos, very vividly, and without satirical intention. Gogol's
success induced him to make a transition from the painting of
uniform to the representation of citizen-life, and his pictures in
exhibitions were justly held to be a piquant pendant to the
creations of Gogol.
In "The Newly Decorated Knight" he painted the room of
a subordinate official who has received his first decoration, and
given his colleagues a banquet, to celebrate the occasion, on the
previous evening. This worthy cannot resist the temptation of
pinning his new token of glory to his dressing-gown as soon as-
it is morning, though his maid-of-all-work holds up in triumph
his worn-out broken boots which she is carrying off to black. The
floor is strewn with broken plates, bottles, glasses, and remnants-
of the feast, and a tipsy guest, who has just come to his senses
and is rubbing his tired eyes, is lying under the table. In St^
Petersburg the picture created an immense sensation ; such
audacity in making mock at imperial distinctions was an unheard-
of thing. And when the work was to have been lithographed
the censorship interfered. The decoration had to disappear^
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429
and the harmless
title " Reproaches
in Consequence of
a Festive Meeting"
was substituted for
the original.
Fedotov's second
picture, " The Ma-
jor's Match," to which
he appended an
explanation in a
hundred and fifty
lines of humorous
verse, depicted two
parties who want
to overreach each
other : a major with
-debts, who wishes to
marry a fat mer-
chant's daughter for
the sake of her
marriage portion, and a rich tradesman who is anxious to be
the father-in-law of a noble. In honour of the day the bride has
thrown on an exceedingly dicollet^e white silk dress, her father
has arrayed himself in his best coat, and her mother, too, is
majestically dignified. They are seated like this in the drawing-
room, and are awaiting with beating hearts the arrival of the
lofty guest. Suddenly the door is opened, and the lady who has
been making the match rushes in, exclaiming, " The Major is
here ! " And thereupon there ensues one of those comical scenes
ol consternation in which Paul de Kock delighted. The daughter,
who has sprung up blushing, wishes to make her escape, but is
held back by her mother catching hold of her dress. The
portly old father cannot succeed in properly arranging his fine
raiment, which he is unaccustomed to wear ; servants are bustling
about bringing refreshments, and an old maid who has ventured
to intrude is all ^yts and ears. Meanwhile through the open
Fedotov: "The Newly Decorated Knight."
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430 MODERN PAINTING
door the elderly and very threadbare figure of the fiance may
be seen in the ante-chamber, casting a critical look in the glass
and giving his moustache a martial curl.
In the third picture it is the young man who has been
hoaxed. He believes himself to have married a rich and
guileless maiden who would give him a complete establishment.
But on the morning after the wedding an officer of justice
appears and makes a seizure of everything ; the young wife
kneels imploring pardon, and through the open door the step-
mother may be seen in the bedroom wringing the neck of a
dove, whose blood drips on the wedding bed.
"The Mouse-trap,' "The Pet Dog is 111," "The Pet Dog is
Dead," "The Milliner's Shop," "The Cholera," "The Return of
the Schoolgirl to her Home," arranged other episodes i la
Hogarth in complicated scenes of comedy ; but, although forcible
contributions to the history of Russian manners, they are
throughout more suitable for literature than for art The
colour is crude, and the characterization verges upon caricature.
It is only the element of still-life that he often handles with
charm, though here he almost approaches the " little masters ""
of Holland. In his later years he attempted to go further irt
this direction, but madness, followed soon afterwards by death,
brought his plans to an end.
And those who came after him made no progjress in this
respect either. They stand to their predecessors as Carl Hiibner
or Wiertz to Madou and Meyerheim. The elder men regarded
painting as a toy or an amusing comic paper, and could seldom
resist giving their pictures a jovial or a smiling trait All their
scenes have a roseate tinge, and reveal nothing of real life —
nothing of all the tragic and saddening miseries of Russia lan-
guishing beneath the yoke of serfdom. These humourists were
followed by doctrinaire preachers. The " picture with a social
purpose," which supplanted the optimistic painting of anecdote
in the rest of Europe, found particularly fertile soil in the
Empire of the Czar. The death of Nicholas I. and the accession
of Alexander II., who had been long beloved and looked
forward to on account of his Liberal opinions — " the angel
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431
Perov; "A Funeral in the Country."
in human shape " he was called as Czarevitch — had freed
Russia from a heavy and oppressive burden ; men began to
breathe freely, and a fresh breeze went through the land. The
Government itself, with its great programme of reform, which
began so energetically by the abolition of serfdom, summoned
all the Liberal thinkers to its assistance ; and, encouraged by
these efforts at emancipation, ideas and views which had been
hitherto concealed and suppressed came to light in all regions
of intellectual life, with an official passport to justify their
existence. Literature, which had been muzzled up to this time,
muttered and thundered in a fearful manner : ** Life is no jest
and no light sport, but heavy toil. Abnegation, continual abne-
gation, is its inward meaning, and the answer to its riddle.*'
Painting also, it was held, must become an educational influence,
and take part in the great battle ; it must join by taking up
its parable and teaching. It was not created to soothe the
senses, but to serve ends that were higher, more progressive, and
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MODERN PAINTING
more enno-
bling to the
world. The
droll and far-
cical element
'of "^the earlier
pictures was
abruptly cast
aside for more
melancholy
ideas. An ar-
gumentative,
didactic paint-
ing, in alliance
with the social
programme,
came then in-
to existence,
and as a result
of these views,
technique, the
purely picto-
rial element, had to suflFer. It was only necessary to have
humane ideas, to dash off in colours mordant innuendoes and
loud complaints, and to bring fresh evidence of the sad condition
of the peasantry, the evils of the administration, the inebriety of
the people, and the corruption of the nobles, to be praised, not
merely as a good Liberal, but as a great painter too.
Perov is the most interesting of these painters with a com-
plaint against society. It is not, indeed, that he had more
talent or loftier ideas than the others, but he was the first to
open fire, and he underlined his bold notions as heavily as
possible. In his earliest pictures, with which he came forward
in 1858— "The Arrival of the Official of Police" and "The
Newly Nominated Registrar of the Board " — he chiefly aimed at
the officials, the heartless and merciless oppressors of the
peasantry. Later he attacked by preference the rural clergy.
Perov: "The Village Sermon."
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RUSSIA 433
whom he depicted incisively in all their brutal coarseness. "An
Ecclesiastical Procession in the Country," in particular, is one
of the typical pictures of this second period. The procession
issues from the house of a rich peasant, where its members
have been drinking freely, and pours into the street. Old
rustics and young lads and girls are reeling in the mud with
images and relics, while the priest staggers along behind,
followed by the deacon. The host is leaning drunk against the
door-post, and the rest are lying unconscious in the dirt. In
1865 he produced one of his best pictures—-" A Funeral in the
Country." A poor widow is seated in a miserable peasant
sledge, with her head sunk forwards and her back against the
coffin of her husband ; two children — a little boy sleeping,
wrapped in his father's great sheepskin, and his pining and
crying sister — crouch behind her, but otherwise a sheep-dog is
the only follower in the funeral train. In "The Village
Sermon" the fat squire has fallen asleep, while his wife im-
proves the occasion by whispering with her lover. Behind them
stands the flunkey keeping the villagers at a respectful distance by
blows and abuse. And in "The Troika" three ragged and half-
famished apprentice boys are drawing a sledge, laden with a great
cask of water ; the ground is frozen hard, and the poor fellows
are almost fainting with exertion. " A Woman who has drowned
herself" is the epilogue to a tragedy, and "The Arrival of the
Governess" the prologue to a drama — a poor, pretty girl coming
to a fresh family and encountering the sensual glance of the
brutal master of the house.
Over most of his contemporaries Perov has the advantage of
standing upon entirely national ground, and displaying his own
qualities instead of making a show with those of others. He is
a man who has had real emotions in life, and has, therefore,
something serious to express. In his hand the pencil changes
into a probe, with which he has penetrated deeply into the
diseased spots in his own natioa He despairs and hopes, fights
and grows faint, has always a keen eye for the good of the
people, accuses the rich, and deduces evils from the open con-
dition of society, but while he points to its bleeding wounds he
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434 MODERN PAINTING
offers it healing balm. And so his pictures betray a complex
frame of mind, out of which tears or laughter may arise at any
moment. He stands to his own people as a mother to a dearly
beloved child. And as she chastens it with a rod and compels
it to take the better part by severe admonition, and then
presses it to her heart and covers it with kisses, Perov protects
and idolizes the people, and in the next moment smites hard
' with the might of his satire. Like a severe judge, he unveils
the misconduct of the great and the abuses practised by
officials, tears the mask from the upper ten thousand, and
reveals their withered faces. He turns to the poor like a kind
father, like a man following the rule of the gospel, and praises
their righteousness. He is at once the accuser of society and
its physician, and his course of healing is to return to nature,
righteousness, truth, and compassion.
One is grateful to him for his philanthropic intentions. But
there is no enjoyment in looking at his pictures, for the school-
master is the assassin of the artist. What is properly pictorial
comes off second-best in them, since he does not command the
handicraft of art In fact he might be most readily compared
with Wiertz, and, like him, he exercised an evil influence upon
a whole group of painters. It is not merely his contemporaries
Pukirev, Korsuchin, Prjaniscfmikov, who have deprived many of
their prettily painted pictures of artistic charm by lachrymose
complaints against society or satirical didacticism, for Savitsky
and Lemoch did the same afterwards.
The most familiarly known of the men with this bent is
Vassily Verestchagin, an apostle of peace tinged with Nihilism.
The exhibition of his pictures which took place in the
February of 1882 at Kroll's, in Berlin, will be remembered.
They were not to be seen by day, but only under electric
light. Concealed by curtains was an harmonium, upon which
war-songs were played, accompanied by subdued choruses. And
the hall was decorated with Indian and Tibetan carpets, em-
broideries and housings, weapons of every description, images
and sacred pictures, musical instruments, antlers, bear-skins, and
stufTed Indian vultures. In the midst of these properties the
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RUSSIA
435
y^y^*^^<.^^
^^^
painter — a little black-bearded man,
like one of those Caucasian warriors
who appear in Theodor Horschelt's
work " From the Caucasus " —
himself did the honours to the
guests who had been invited.
Although still young, Verest-
chagin had already seen a great
deal of life. After leaving the
school of G6r6me in Paris, he ac-
companied the expedition of General
Kaufmann against Samarcand.
Horschelt, with whom he made
acquaintance at the scene of war
in the Caucasus, took him in 1870 for a couple of years to
Munich. When the Russo-Turkish War broke out in 1877
he again accompanied the Russian troops, and even took an
active share in the struggle : he was in the Shipka Pass,
went with Gourko over the Balkans, was present at the siege
of Plevna, and worked as the secretary of General Skobeleff
during the negotiations of peace at San Stefano. And, having
fought everywhere with the savageness of a Caucasian, he began
to preach peace as an apostle of humanity.
"The Pyramid of Skulls — dedicated to all Conquerors past,
present, and to come," was as it were the title-page to his thrilling
works. In " Forgotten " a wounded soldier lay upon the field
of battle with famishing ravens gathering round him, whilst his
battalion was seen disappearing in the distance. In another of
his pictures there was the Emir of Samarcand lost in agreeable
contemplation of a heap of decapitated heads strewn at his feet.
In another there stood a fair-haired priest blessing a whole crowd
of mutilated Russians upon a steppe. Still more ghastly was
the picture entitled " The Street after Plevna." It is an icy cold
winter's day, and the desolate landscape and the bodies of those
who have died upon the transport-car are covered with a light
crust of snow. The artillery of later columns have driven with
indifference over the dead, crushing them, and the crows and
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436
MODERN PAINTING
Verestchagin :
•'The Pyramid of Skulls."
ravens thank
the Lord for
the richly
spread table
which has
been pre-
pared for
them. In
dense swarms
they flutter
down to the
opulent ban-
quet, and
most densely of all where the wheels of the gun-carriages have
made a way for their beaks. Then, thoroughly sated, they alight
upon the telegraph wires to digest their meal in peace. Ghastly
corruption reigns in " The Turkish Hospital before Plevna," a
gloomy cellar where sick and wounded men welter in confused
masses amid mouldy corpses. Near this hung the trilogy of
pictures representing the sentinel freezing with cold. At the
side of that was the picture of the Czar Alexander with his
staff, regarding the battle raging around as though it were a
stage-play. " Skobelefl* in the Shipka Pass " brought the series
to a conclusion. There he is, fat, and with a full, flushed
countenance, dashing over the ground, which is covered with
snow and strewn with corpses, as he good-humouredly summons
his freezing comrades to a champagne breakfast, crying, " Brothers,
I thank you in the name of the Emperor."
In spite of his Parisian studies Verestchagin's work in all
these pictures was very crude — full in colour, but thin and
uninteresting in technique. Moreover the ostentatious arrange-
ments which he made for his exhibitions, and the cleverness
with which he calculated the effect upon the great public, did
not contribute to enhance his artistic reputation. And his coarse-
ness and crudity when he works by legitimately artistic means
may be seen in his ethnographical pictures from Turkestan and
India, which stand in technique incomparably below similar
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RUSSIA
437
works by Pasini,
and will lose what
remains of their
interest with the
discovery of photo-
graphy in colours.
Nevertheless Verest-
chagin's significance
for Russian art is
great.
What had been
hitherto produced in
the matter of battle-
pieces — Orlovsky's
work excepted — is
scarcely worth men-
tioning. Sauerveid
and Villevalde were
lifeless copyists of
Horace Vernet
Kotzebue, the son
of the well-known
author, no doubt
showed deftness in
composition, groupings
swarms of soldiers in
Munich : Hanfsi&Hgl.^
Verestchagin : **The Emir of Samarcand visiting
THE Trophies."
and scenical accessories. There are
his pictures. Huge cliffs, ancient for-
tresses and houses tower picturesquely one above the other. But
the men are made of lead, and the landscapes are stage-scenes,
at once empty and banal. In fact he was merely an opulent
arrangeur who was learned in uniforms, and the dramatic element
of war escaped him altogether.
Now Verestchagin struck out an entirely new path. A short
time before his appearance Tolstoi's great novel War and Peace haJ
been published, and there war had been for the first time depicted,
not from the prejudiced standpoint of a patriot, but with the
lucid spirit of a cosmopolitan author. The mere painting of
horrors is avoided : it is a thing rather indicated than brought
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438 MODERN PAINTING
out in detail ; but the great figure of the Destroyer with his
hyenas and his terrors is nevertheless the principal figure of
the narrative. Even Tolstoi's patriotism sometimes mocks at
itself, and from the midst of his representations of soldierly
loyalty and the contempt of death there rises the heart-breaking
cry : " To what purpose ? " The painter continued the motives
which the author had indicated. All who had gone before
him — and not in Russia alone — were official illustrators who
glorifieid the theme "Dulce et decorum est" in the service of
victorious Governments. True to the principles of young Russia,
Verestchagin became the accuser of the military system, by
making the reverse side of martial splendour — all the misery
and the sanguinary destruction of masses, with which glory is
purchased — the subject of representation. In the one case war
is represented from the standpoint of the regimental captain ;
in the other from one which is purely human. He wanted to
paint war as it is, and not as a suitable embellishment for
the Winter Palace. And here he is a pioneer on the path leading
to truth, which assures him an honourable if not a lofty place
in the history of the development taken by the modern principle
in art.
This storm-and-stress period in Russian art came to an end
with Verestchagin. It was impossible to be for ever laying on
the scourge, uttering curses, and thundering against the evils of
creation. After the storm there came a calm, and disillusionment
after the revolt. Society became quiet again, literature laid down
its arms, and painters also grew weary of forgetting their own
calling in the service of progressive ideas. The sensational style
of painting with a purpose- and a grievance was thrown into
the background, and all the greater weight was laid upon
conscientious and harmonious execution.
In this battle to establish what was purely pictorial, landscape
played the mediating part in Russia as in the rest of Europe.
Russia possesses in Turgeniev's Diary of a Sportsman one of the
most remarkable books in modern literature. Turgeniev dis-
covered the forests and steppes of his country, and made them
speak, and made them silent. He loves nature as though she
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439
Stschedrin : ** Sorrento/
were a mistress, clings to her, and becomes so wedded to her that
he feels in solitude like a fish in the cool tide. What a charming
idyll of the forest it is when in the course of the day's sport he
lies on his back and looks up into the cloudy sky, or when he
roams of an evening through the fragrant meadow-lyid, or
crouches at night beside a shepherd's fire and watches the sky
from midnight to the glimmering of dawn ; when he describes
little farms where content and poverty are mingled, or those
of the gloomy boundless regions in the interior of Russia, where
everything is sad, like a vaporous, grey, rainy day. This strange
mixture of love and dread, the fervour for nature and the horror
of her, stands alone in the whole literature of the world. Every
blade of grass lives ; everything stirs, and the creative impulse is
everywhere ; the spirit of the steppe floats visibly over the earth,
weird, mysterious, cold, dumb, and awful. And in art also
landscapes are the most enjoyable productions which modern
Russia has brought forth.
The founder of this Russian school was Stschedrin^ who died
at thirty-eight in Naples. He was a painter who was so simple
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440 MODERN PAINTING
and had so much warmth and temperament that Europe could
not show the like in the twenties of this century. His work
towers over everything which was at that time painted by
Bertin and Valenciennes, dr even Rottmann and Koch. He
was the direct successor of Dujardin, Berchem, and Pynacker,
and their equal in spirit His landscapes indeed, which are
principally views of Naples, have great delicacy of colour, although
they are sometimes heavy and bituminous in their shadows.
Moreover they are so full of light and air, so splendid, and so
finely and energetically painted, that it is astonishing to read the
date. 1 820 underneath, for 1650 or 1660 might be more readily
ascribed to them.
Lebedev, who also died young in Naples, was Stschedrin's
energetic follower in the battle against Winckelmann's principles.
Indeed, if he had lived a few years longer and returned to his
native land, Russian painting would probably have been able to
set up a worthy rival to the great European landscapists of 1830.
Even his earliest little pictures, painted before his Italian journey
— thin and grey views of St. Petersburg — give him a place
amongst the first champions of paysage intime, and this in spite
of their hard tone and their childish and awkward technique.
And in Italy he and Blechen were the first who rendered the
South without any strained effort at style. " Gradually,'* he writes,
" I am setting myself free from all prejudices. Nature has
opened my eyes, and I am beginning to be her slave. In my
last works you will not find composition or effects, for every-
thing is simple there."
But the period of historical painting led artists astray for
some time. In Russia, as elsewhere, the polished exotic, pictur-
esque views, cultivated for years by Vorobiev^ RabuSy Lagorio^
Horavsky, BogoliuboVy Mestschersky^ and others, had their vogue.
They all wished merely to see nature through a prism which
would render her beautiful ; they imitated Calame and Achen-
bach, sometimes adroitly and sometimes mechanically, indulged
in platitudes which have been long outgrown, and are tedious
and insipid, in spite of all their Oriental towers, Gothic castles,
calm or agitated seas, rocky regions, and glaring effects of light.
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441
Schischkin: "A Forest Landscape."
Aivasavsky alone takes high rank amongst them, although he
was a rapid painter, a d^corateur for ever seizing upon loud,
pyrotechnical effects a la Gudin. But in spite of their glaring
and violent colours many of his sea-pieces reproduce with great
cogency the grandeur and crash of the storm, and others the
limitless peace of the sea ; and in virtue of these he seems a
forerunner of the later landscape of "mood."
This was, in fact, developed as soon as Russian landscape-
painting returned to Russian soil. But, until the forties, painters
were under the persuasion that their home, the flat, sad country
where grey was harmonized on grey, could offer no subject worth
painting, and that it was only richly coloured Southern prospects
that were artistically possible. The brothers Tscliemezoff and
the copper-engraver Galaktionov^ indeed, drew views of towns
according to all the rules of the books of topography, but
without higher pretensions.
Schischkin^ however, recognized that the Russian painter could
only love and understand Russian landscape, and reproduce it
artistically. When he was sent abroad he begged to be allowed
to return and paint without hindrance what was dearer to him.
VOL. \\\, 29
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MODERN PAINTING
ScHiscHKiN : " A Woody Landscape.*
{ArtiatM,
than all else beside. The north of Russia is a pallid, melancholy
land. It is without great lines and imposing masses, and every-
thing is lost in vanishing nuances. Nevertheless Schischkin
succeeded in grasping the individuality of this scenery, and in
rendering it in his drawings with unrivalled mastery — in drawings,
for the life of colour was a thing alien to him throughout his
life. All his oil-pictures are phlegmatically prosaic, paltry, and
pedantically correct ; but the fresh spontaneity and chromatic
delicacy which he attained in his etchings and charcoal drawings
are all the more striking.
His direct followers show no advance in technique. Baron
Klodt had a certain proclivity for the picturesque, in consequence
of which his pictures lost in plainness and intimacy, while
Orlovsky, Fedders^ VolkoVy and others remained always hard in
colour, arid, and pedantic. The stripling Vassiliev, who died
at three-and-twenty, was, in fact, the first to prove that the
landscape-painter did not need to be a photographer im-
mortalizing this or that region in a superficial portrait, but
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RUSSIA 443
-could become a medium between man and nature, an interpreter
■of that secret musical language through which nature in all
places speaks to the human soul. With him the Russian
landscape of " mood " was first born. There was no further
requisition for Alpine peaks and ocean, and motley colours
straining after eflTect, for the artist learnt tenderly and simply
to celebrate the scenery of his native land. Levitan painted
his " Quiet Monastery," a deeply moving picture full of feeling ;
Kuindshi painted Southern nights and bright birch-woods full
of quivering air and moonlight or sunshine ; Savrassov delicate
spring landscapes impregnated with great poetic feeling ;
Sudkovsky interpreted gravely the majesty of the sea ; Vassnetzov
the sad waste of Siberia, its dark plains and endless virgin
forests ; Albert Benois produced brilliant pictures of the East,
and delicate, sensitive Russo-Finnish landscapes ; and Svjeto-
slavsky seized the character of Moscow.
And through these landscape-painters, who went their own
way quietly and modestly, far from the tumult of philanthropical
ideas, there rose an impulse to give artistic treatment to the
figure-picture likewise. The sense of the purely pictorial was
strengthened, and artists began to turn from narrative and
didactic art and to represent simply what they saw around
them, without ulterior designs. At first they did so feebly
and laboriously, then with more energy and with increasing
perception and ability. Svertscfikov painted animal pictures,
but could hit off the Russian peasant and the Russian pro-
prietor very finely indeed. His representations of horses in
particular — those poor little patient Russian horses, now sink-
ing in the snow, now scorched by the sun or trotting
merrily in the troika — are exceedingly truthful, animated, and
sympathetic. Peter Sokolov produced hunting-scenes, funerals,
and tavern-rooms — all in a plain and vigorous style, which
was now and then cynical, though always striking. He is
a painter of individuality even in his technique, for his
pictures are a mixture of delicate aquarelles, heavy gouache
colours, pastel, and ink. Through the most remarkable com-
binations he succeeds in attaining an impression which is
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Ivan Kramskoi.
sometimes crude, but frequently
exceedingly piquant and full of
character.
But the principal advance was
made by a phalanx of young^
artists who worked their way
upwards during the sixties and
seventies. In 1863 thirteen
pupils completed their studies
at the St. Petersburg Academy^
and entered into competition
for the gold medal, which took
the place there of the Prix^
de Rome, Their leader was a
somewhat older student, Ivan
Kramskoi y a poor young fellow
who could barely earn his bread as retoucher at a photo-
grapher's. The pictures which he had produced at the time
of his death are few, and have long been surpassed by the
performances of younger men. There are some portraits which
for all their earnest veracity do not get beyond the arid effect
of photography. And even his few figure-pictures, such as
" Anguish that will not be Comforted " (a mother bewailing
her son), only produce a mediocre effect in spite of their
forcible realism and their sincerity, which is free from all
forced vehemence. But in the history of Russian art Kramskoi
has the importance of one who had a quickening influence.
He served the young school with his head rather than his
hand. He was an ardent spirit, an energetic agitator, and
soon gathered all around him who were healthy, fresh in
mind, and enthusiastic. And his ideas upon art and the
loftiness of the artist's calling were worked out so completely^
and he had the secret of laying them before his younger
comrades with such conviction, enthusiasm, and impressiveness^
that they all looked up to him as their standard-bearer. In
Kramskoi's confined room, where the furniture consisted of a
few broken chairs and poverty was a daily visitant, those seeds
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RUSSIA 445
of thought were developed which soon became the guiding
principles of the new Russian painting.
When the Board of Professors at St. Petersburg refused to
give the thirteen competitors free choice of subject for their
prize exercise, wishing to compel them to represent "The Grod
Odin in Valhalla," they one and all left the Academy in open
feud. They were tired of having an official style prescribed
to them by the accepted "school," and no longer cared to have
a uniform forced upon their work. Imagination and creative
energy were more to them than laws or code, for they wanted
to be free men and not to purchase diplomas by convention
and medals. Between academicism and individual purpose there
was the same breach in Russia that took place sooner or later
in every other country. "The Society for Wandering Ex-
hibitions," which up to the present has remained the centre
of the Russian national school, and which comprehends in itself
all the young, animated, and promising men of talent in the
country, was recruited from these seceding painters in 1870.
And though it is a centre it is one that wanders through the
•entire land. The " Wanderers " have emancipated Russian
painting from everything alien, anecdotic, didactic, and eclectic;
they have placed it upon thoroughly national soil, endowed it
with a new and independent technique, and within a few years
they have won an honourable position amid European schools
of art
Meanwhile some of those thirteen students have forgotten
their storm-and-stress period and become different men. Most
of all is this true of Constantin Makavsky, who is now but a
caricature of what he was when he painted his " Carnival in
St. Petersburg" and the gloomy "Child's Funeral in the
Country." All the decorative panels, visionary heads of maidens,
musing "bojar" women, and indecently voluptuous bacchanals,
which he turns out by the dozen, have an insufferable light rosy
crust of colour ; they have all the same weak drawing, and the
same sensuousness unredeemed by a trace of taste. Even his
pictures from the life of " bojars " in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, which are in great request in America, are
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MODERN PAINTING
V. Makovsky: "A Bankruptcy.'
spoilt by sickly sentimentality or a misapplied air of distinction
and comnie-il-faut.
His younger brother, Vladimir Makovsky, has still a weakness
for lachrymose anecdotes, aimed in a commonplace way against
society ; or in an effort at characterization he falls into obtrusive
caricature a la Briitt. But in his smaller and less ambitious
pictures, which are delicately painted after nature, he is tasteful,
luxuriant, and really fine.
The greatest of them all, from the very first day, was Elias
Ripin, and he remains so still. In him was embodied the artistic
power of contemporary Russia. His works, with those of Tolstoi,
Turgeniev, Gontscharov, and Dostoievski, will hand down to
later times a vivid and characteristic account of the Russia of
the last five-and-twenty years in all its completeness — an account
including all grades of society, from the nobles to the outlaws, the
village clergy and the peasants.
R^pin is now slightly over fifty years of age. Springing
from an old Cossack stock, he was born in 1844 at Tschuguev^
in the department of Charkow. As the son of an indigent officer,
he received his first instruction in the village school, which was-
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447
carried on by his
mother, being taught
at a later period by
the sexton of the
parish church.
Then he entered
a military school,
which was broken
up when he was
thirteen. A me-
chanical painter of
saints of the name
of Bunakov gave
him his first know-
ledge of drawing.
And at the end of
three years he was
already in a position
to gain a livelihood
by painting the pic-
tures of saints, and
three years after that he wandered to the distant imperial city
upon the Neva to enter the Academy there. During the six
years that he remained as an Academy pupil his talent developed
rapidly. Even the picture entitled "The Raising of Jairus's
Daughter," produced for an Academy prize competition, revealed
him in his power and energy, gleaming like a diamond amongst
pebbles beside the other works sent in for competition. The
medal, accompanied by a travelling scholarship of some years*^
duration, was awarded to him. So he went abroad to Paris and
Rome, studying both the old and the modern masters. Yet he
was not ensnared by foreign influences. In fact the best pic-
ture which he painted in Italy, ** Szadko in the Wonderful Realm
of the Sea," was based upon a national Russian saga. In a gulf
of the sea penetrated by the sunshine, nixies and sea-nymphs^
embodying the different feminine types of Europe, are vainly
striving to catch the young and handsome Szadko ; but it was
Makovsky: **A Duet."
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MODERN PAINTING
only Tschernavuschka
emerging vaguely in the
distance that enchained
him. And the painter
himself was drawn home-
wards. Even before his
scholarship had expired he
begged permission to re-
turn, and in 1873 he com-
pleted his "Burlaki," the
men who tow vessels along
the Volga, the masterpiece
of modern Russian art.
"In the blaze of the
noonday sun, youths, men,
and boys are tramping
along, in the burning sand
on the flat, unsheltered
banks of the river, with
the thick ropes round
breast and shoulders, and
their tanned, naked feet planted upon the hot ground. The
hair falls in disorder upon their brownish-red brows, which are
dripping with perspiration. Here and there a man holds his
arm before his face to protect himself from the scorching rays.
Singing a monotonous, melancholy, barbaric melody, they drag
the high-masted barque laden with crops, up-stream, through the
wide, deserted plain ; their work was yesterday what it is to-day
and will be to-morrow. It is as if they had been tramping like
this for centuries, and would be pushing forward in the same
way for centuries to come. Types they are of the life of serfs
in Europe, types cast variously together from the North and
the South and the East of the vast empire, by the hand of
Fate : the children of different slave-races, most of them figures
of iron, though there are some who seem feeble ; some are in-
different too, whilst others are brooding gloomily, — but they are
one and all pulling at the same rope."
Elias RiPIN.
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449
Repin : *'Men towing a Ship along the Volga."
With this picture, an epic embodying the spirit of the Russian
people, R^pin stood out as a finished artist. He had looked
upon these worn-out men, set to the work of brutes, with the
eye of a philanthropist and the eagle glance of an artist ; their
sorrowful songs had moved him deeply, and he grasped the
dreadful reality with an inflexible hand, and placed it with
glowing colours upon the canvas in all its fearful veracity. A
dumb sorrow overshadows the picture, all the pessimistic gloom
that hovers over Russia. As yet no other work had expressed
with all the resources of European painting the resigned suffering
and that weary absence of desire which are the peculiarity of
this race of people. And let him paint portraits, or rustic life,
or pictures from Russian history, R^pin remained, even in his
later works, ever the same inherently forceful master.
An element of gloom, oppression, and debasement reigns
consistently throughout. Even when he represents, for a change,
the village youth in the joy of the dance, the merriment
resembles inebriation. But the denunciatory narrative element
has been finally cast aside. In place of the vehement extrava-
gances of inartistic painting with a moral purpose, there is in
R^pin a mild fervour reconciled with suffering and subdued to
a spirit of still humility. There rises from his pictures a heavy
feeling that weighs upon the heart, and this simply because he
painted so plainly what he saw. There is in them an ineffable
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RcPiN : ♦* The Cossacks* Jeering Reply to the Sultan.'*
luxury of woe, a low yearning cry for the peacefulness of death,
something of the resigned melancholy of Russian songs with
their slow movement There is in them, as in the works of the
Russian authors, a profound compassion for the poor and
miserable — the suffering, hopeless mood which weighs upon the
country everywhere, the entire spirit of this strange nation,
which is still young and in its prime, and yet sick in spirit,
and looking faint and weary to a leaden sky.
In a large picture of 1883 a church procession may be seen
upon its way forth. All the people from the neighbourhood
of the village have set out, young and old, halt and sound.
A troop of peasants, in torn furs and patched clothes, are
panting as they carry along with stupid looks a heavy shrine,
hoisted upon poles and festally adorned with ribbons. The
crowd are pressing and elbowing behind — cripples and hunch-
backs, a dirty sexton staring straight before him, and old
women muttering prayers in a dull, smothered ecstasy. And
a tall country gendarme is laying into them, right and left,
with the knout, to make room for the clergy, the head of rural
police, and the village elders. Then there are again masses
of people, fluttering banners and crucifixes, an endless defile of
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RUSSIA
451
LtipMtg: StemanM.]
Repin: "The Miracle of St. Nicholas."
misery, hebetude,
helplessness, and
filth, and at the
tail of the body
another gendarme
with a whip. Huge
volumes could tell
no more of the his-
tory of the countr>'
than this simple
picture, in the centre
of which the knout
is whistling in the
very midst of eccle-
siastical banners.
Amongst R^pin's
portraits, those of
the poet Pissemski,
with strange, vivid
eyes ; that of the composer Mussorsky, sketched a few days
before his death ; that of the novel-writer Vassevolad Garschin,
who died young by his own hand a few years ago ; and those
of Count Tolstoi, are worthy of special praise. Tolstoi he has
painted several times, representing him upon one occasion striding
behind the plough.
At comparatively recent exhibitions some historical pictures
of his made a sensation. After Russian painting had gone through
the school of life, and bold naturalism had taken the place of
classical abstraction, painters could venture to utilize national
history without falsity or theatrical costume. The first attempt
of this kind had been made by Tschistjakov in his picture
"Sophie Vitotovna." In the sixties Schwarz, who died early,
came forward with his energetic representations from the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. Jacohy sought to catch the
historical physiognomy of Russian Court life in the eighteenth
century. With his "Puschkin" and his "Peter I." the portrait-
painter Gay was very successful. Surikov produced his "Bojar
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R^piN : Count Leo Tolstoi.
Woman Norosovna" and "The Execution of the Strelitzes,"
gloomy and thoroughly Russian pictures, bearing witness to an
earnest attempt to live the life of the past. But in this field
also R6pin distanced all his predecessors, plunged into the past
with most energy and freedom, broke with all tame compromise
the most abruptly, and conjured up things long gone by with a
terrible force of conviction, as though they had been seen and
lived through. His " Ivan the Cruel, who has slain his Son in
a Sudden Paroxysm of Fury," made such an impression at the
exhibition of 1885 that the public stood before it horrified, while
ladies were carried away fainting. It might have recalled the
best modem historical pictures of Spain, except that R^pin's work
made a more gloomy, elemental, and barbaric effect. An old
man, with his face spattered with blood and his savage features
distorted with despair, kneels on the floor in the centre of a wide
hall of the Kremlin : his eyes start from their sockets, dilated with
horror, and stare vacantly in the torture of conscience ; in his arms
he holds the fainting figure of a youth, over whose countenance,
which streams with blood, death casts its awful shadow.
R^pin's picture " The Cossacks' Jeering Reply to the Sultan " is
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RUSSIA 453
a combination of magnificent military heads, a collection of figures
conceived with a force recalling Gogol ; they are figures that are
really made of flesh and blood, and barbaric to the bone and
marrow. No brilliant painting of material has been aimed at>
no grace in line and composition. He makes use of historical
painting merely to depict children of nature in their primitive
passions. His picture of St. Nicholas preventing the execution
of three innocent men who have been condemned to death has
something butcherly in conception, and in execution something
inherently thrilling. At once imperious and impressive is the
gesture with which the saint strikes the arm of the brutal and
astonished executioner, a man of muscular build, while the enthu-
siasm of the victims, in their gratitude to their good genius, is
powerful and convincing. In technique, also, R6pin is a great
modem master, with a sharp decision in drawing and colour,
and an earnest, almost ascetic simplicity, which admit only of
what is indispensable and subservient to the designed effect of
the picture. His "Ship's Crew" of 1873 was praised as the
sunniest picture at the Vienna Exhibition ; and from that time
he has gone forward with a firm step. His works became lighter
and brighter from year to year ; and R6pin found what Ivanov
had sought in vain— sun, air, and life. To Russian art he is
what Menzel is to German and what Manet was to French. He
breathes the atmosphere of his own time and his own people,
and since his appearance there has been a greater number of
masters who have painted Russian life with a knowledge of all
the resources of the new French technique, together with that
feeling for nature and humanity which marks the most eminent
performances of Russian literature. The secret song of the
steppes, that song of boundless love and boundless sufferings, is
becoming intelligible to painters at last Their tale is not yet
complete in the European sessions of art, and beside the Western
nations they are " dead souls " as yet. But they began a great
period of liberation in Russian painting, and when that man
comes who shall arouse these souls from slumber, he may hope
the best from their youthful vigour which has never been
worked out.
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CHAPTER XLIV
AMERICA
The previous history of American art — The first Americans who worked
in England : Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart
Newton, Charles Robert Leslie. — The first portrait-painters in
America itself : Gilbert Stuart, Charles Wilson Peale^ Joseph
Wright, Loring Charles Elliot, — The grand painting : John Trum^
bull, Washington Allston, Emanuel Leutze, — Genre painting:
William Sydney Mount — The landscape-painters : Thomas Cole,
Albert Biers tadt, John B, Bristol, Frederick E. Church, J. F.
Kensett, Sanford R, Gifford, James Fairman, the Morgans,
William Morris Hunt — The Americans in Paris : Henry Mosler,
Carl Gutherz, Frederick A, Bridgman, Edwin Weeks, Harry
Humphrey Moore, Julius Z. Stewart, Charles Spragtie Pearce,
William T, Dannat, Alexander Harrison, Walter Gay, Eugine
Vail, Walter MacEwen, — The Americans in Holland: Gari
Melchers, George Hitchcock, — The Americans in London : John
Singer Sargent, Henry Muhrmann, — The Americans in Munich:
Carl Marr, Charles Frederick Ulrich, Robert Koehler, Sion
Wenban, Orrin Peck, Hermann Hartwich, — The Americans at
home,— The painters of Negro and Indian life: Winslow Homer,
A If red Kappes, G, Brush, — The founding of the Society of American
Artists: Walter Shir law, George Fuller, George Inness, Wyatt
Eaton^ Dwight William Tryon^ J. Appleton Brawny the Morans^
L, C. Tiffany^ John Francis Murphy ^ Childe Hassam^ Julian Alden
Weir^ H, W, Ranger, H. S. Bisbing, Charles H, Davis, George
Innessy junior, J. G, Brown, J. M. C. Hamilton, Ridgway Knight,
Robert William Vonnoh, Charles Edmund Tarbell.—The influence
of Whistler : Kenyon Cox, W. Thomas Dewing, Julius Rolshoven,
William Merrit Chase,
IN spite of its greater geographical distance America lies
nearer to the artistic centres of Europe than Russia. It is
only possible to become acquainted with Russian painting in
the country itself, at its " wandering exhibitions," but the
successes of the Americans are chronicled in the annals of the
454
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AMERICA 455
Paris Salon. Their art is an exact echo of that of Europe,
because they have learnt their technique in the leading European
Academies. Indeed the drama of America is divided into the
very same acts as that of Europe. The piece which has gone
the round of the theatres of Europe is produced in America,
though the names of the actors are not the same.
Up to the Declaration of Independence in 1776 there were
neither painters nor sculptors in America. People ate and
drank, and built, and reclaimed the land, and multiplied. But
a large bar of iron was of more value than the finest statue,
and an ell of good cloth was prized more highly than " The
Transfiguration" of Raphael. Here and there, perhaps, there
were old family portraits which some emigrant had brought
with him from Europe, but these were not calculated to awaken
a taste for art As a rule public buildings were made of wood,
or of brick at best, and they had no pretensions to style. The
settlers were poor, and far too much occupied with getting fish
and potatoes for their daily support to trouble themselves about
problems of colour. In addition to this, art was repudiated by
the Quakers as a bauble of the world. And it was only when
the dollar began to display its might that enterprising portrait-
painters, who had failed in Europe, occasionally crossed the
ocean to make the New World happy with their dubious art
Incited by these strangers, a few young men on the far side
of the world cherished the belief that they could find a lucra-
tive vocation by painting. But, since the ground was not yet
ready for them at home, they first set to work in Europe. As
soon as he was one-and-twenty, Benjamin West, the first artist
born in the New World, went over to London, where he after-
wards became the President of the Royal Academy. He was
followed by John Singleton Copley, who opposed the Classical
productions of the age by his vigorous representations of con-
temporary events of war, while Gilbert Stuart Newton and
Charles Robert Leslie play a part in the history of English
genre painting.
When, at the close of the revolutionary war, the population
gradually came to know more of peace, artistic needs were
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456 MODERN PAINTING
first felt in America itself; but a favourable field was at first
only offered for portrait- painters, as was the case in England
also. Born in Narraganset in 1756, Gilbert Stuart was notably
active in Boston from the year 1793, after he had returned
from Europe ; and he, to begin with, is a man who might
hold his own with honour beside the great British portraitists.
He was a man of independent mind, who neither imitated
his master, West, nor yet Reynolds and Gainsborough, nor
borrowed anything from the old painters. " I mean to sec
nature," he said, " with my own eyes. Rembrandt looked at
her with his and Raphael with his, and although they have
nothing in common, both are marvellous." IJe was a masterly
colourist, and in some of his portraits, such as that of Wash-
ington in the Boston Athenaeum, or that of " Mr. Grant upon
the Ice," stands immediately beside Gainsborough. The latter
picture, in fact, was exhibited in England in 1878 over the
name of Gainsborough, and was then first put to the credit of
the real master.
In addition to Stuart, Charles Wilson Peale^ Joseph Wright,
Chester Harding, and, more particularly, Loring Charles Elliot
acquired fame as incisive masters of characterization. Elliot,
as a matter of fact, was one of the best of his age. A trait of
greatness and of the most keen and fine characterization runs
through his pictures. The people he painted are gnarled genuine
types of that race which felled the woods, cultivated the wide and
desolate lands, and in the space of a single century gave their
republic strength to take a place amongst the foremost nations.
One of these portrait-painters, John Trumbull, who had taken
part in the War of Independence as Washington's adjutant, and
who had been for a long time one of West's pupils when a
political prisoner in London, made a transition from portrait-
painting to the glorification of his country's deeds in war.
Influenced by Copley's London pictures, he addressed a letter to.
the President of the Republic, offering " to preserve the memory of
every national event by a monumental work." And evidence of
his muscular energy is specially to be found in the series of mural
paintings from the American War of Independence with which he
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AMERICA 457
embellished the Capitol of Washington in 1817. Besides these
there are to be seen in American collections historical pieces
of his, such as "The Battle of Bunkers Hill" "The Death of
Montgomery/' " The Declaration of American Independence,"
"The Departure of the Garrison from Gibraltar," and other
works of a similar kind, which in their healthy realism are more
or less of a parallel to the pictures of Gros.
By the Romantic movement America was only moderately
affected, for there were no knights or monks or bandits over
whom it was possible to wax enthusiastic ; and the tendency
which reached its climax in Ingres and Cornelius only found a
representative in Washington Allston. He was a many-sided
man who had first studied under West, and then for some years
in Italy, while from 1818 he painted in Boston representations
from the Bible and from history, portraits, ideal figures, genre
pictures, and landscapes. He was lauded for his poetic vein, and
named the American Titian. Such enthusiasm on the part of
contemporaries is, of course, invariably followed by a more
chastened style of criticism, and Koehler, in his history ot
American painting, can find nothing to say to Allston's advantage.
Nevertheless, so far as his principal works can be judged by
reproductions, he seems to have been a strong and forcible artist,
" The Two Sisters," " Jeremiah and the Scribe," and " The Dead
Man raised after touching the Bones of Elisha" are favourable
samples of his work. The drawing is noble and large, the idea
simple and deep, and the figures betray something bluff, out-
landish, and realistically angular, which brings him nearer the
English Preraphaelites than the Idealists.
With Allston's death in 1843, however, his style became
extinct, and the genius of grand painting* departed from the
New World for ever, while a German, Emanuel Leutze, went
further on the path trodden by West and Copley. Born in
Wurtemberg and nearly chosen as Director in Diisseldorf, he can-
not altogether be reckoned amongst the Americans. And indeed
his pictures from the War of Liberation are really American in
nothing except subject ; while it is, at most, the staid, virile trait
in his work which distinguishes him from the Diisseldorfers.
VOL. III. 30
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458 MODERN PAINTING
However his " Washington crossing the Delaware " is a sincere
and loyal historical picture, which in its quiet, matter-of-fact
composition rather resembles an earnest artist like Copley than
Lessing with his sentimentalism and exaggeration.
After Leutze had shown the way, Germany for a time took
the place of England and Italy as a training-school for American
artists. A whole troop — Edward White, William Henry Powell,
and Henry Peters Gray amongst the number — followed him to Diis-
seldorf, and, after their return, endowed the world with historical
pictures of a sentimental and academical cast. Even the genre
painters in America differed little from their Diisseldorf con-
temporaries. Mention should be made of a pupil of Meyerheim,
Thomas Hill, who was fond of making his Californian landscapes
the stage for idyllic scenes of childhood, and there was Daniel
Huntingdon, who at the close of his life, when he was President
of the New York Academy, indulged in allegorical pictures, such
as " Mercy's Dream," " The Sibyls," apd the like. The place
taken in England by Wilkie belongs in America to William
Sydney Mount. Himself a farmer, he adapted the life of American
countryfolk and negroes for facetious purposes. But though he
made use of a studio upon wheels, with which he was able to
go round the country, his pictures — " Bargaining for a Horse,"
**The Cheat," "The Little Thieves," and so forth — might just
as well have been painted in England or Germany as in America.
Indeed the most original work produced in American painting
in those days was done in the field of landscape. William CuUen
Bryant's Thanatopsis appeared in 1 8 1 7, and this was a book which
had the same significance for America as the works of Thomson
and Rousseau had for England and France : soon afterwards
** The Hudson-River School " began to rise, glorifying the marvels
of the Rocky Mountains, the banks of the Hudson, and the
American lakes, though at first only in the Classical style. The
real initiator of the movement was Thotnas Cole, who goes on lines
more or less parallel with those of the Germans Koch and
Reinhart, and in some of his works with those of Joseph Vernet.
Poussin was his ideal, historical composition his strong point, and
colour his weakness.
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AMERICA 459
Then, for a time, German Romanticism with its lyrical temper
and its sickly passion for moonshine became the determining in-
fluence. As Cole, who came from England, applied the principles
-of Wilson to American mountain scenery, Albert Bierstadt^ who
was born in Diisseldorf, introduced the Diisseldorfian manner of
landscape into the New World. Having studied under Lessing
on the Rhine in 1853, he took part in 1858 in an expedition
of General Lander in the Rocky Mountains, and these wild
regions of the West gave him henceforth the material for his
pictures. Whole mountain chains stretch out like a panorama,
and deep mountain lakes, and wild masses of shattered cliff,
and headlong waterfalls and silent forests. Only a trapper,
a cowboy, or an Indian riding bareback after buffalo gives
occasional animation to the desolate wilderness. Matters of
such ethnographical interest met with approval in Europe
also, and quite naturally. At the time when Gude represented
Norway, his native land, for the benefit of the European
public, Bierstadt put into the market the boundless American
prairies with their herds of buffalo, the defiant, gigantic forms
of the mountain cliffs, and the valleys of California— pictures
which united geographical accuracy with the effort to compass
-dazzling meteorological effects. John B. Bristol and Frederick
Edward Church followed a similar course, representing with
strong effects of light or mere photographic exactness views of
Chimborazo, of tropical moonlight in Mexico, of the thundering
falls of Niagara, and of the huge mountain masses of the West.
The Alps were also popular, and the rich fields of Italy.
J, F, Kensett, who is said to have had a fine feeling for the
poetry of colour and to have painted admirably the lovely shores
•of the mountain lakes in America, enjoys the fame of being the
best master of technique, while Sanford R, Gifford.^n American
Hildebrandt, who glorified all the phenomena of light in America,
Italy, and the East, is reputed to be the most many-sided of this
group. Amongst other landscapists of the sixties George Loring
Brown, a sort of American Claude, Worthington Whitredge of
Ohio, a pupil of Achenbach, John W, Casilear, Albert Bellows,
Richard W, Hubbard, W. T, Richards, F. Cropsey, Edward Gay,
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Amtrican Art Btvinv,]
Hunt: "Sheep in a Meadow."
and IV. Stanley Haseltine
may be mentioned ; but
it is impossible for one
who is not an American
to judge of their work.
In general the career of
American landscape seems
to have been that, under
the influence of European
paysage intime^ artists
gradually came to lay less
weight upon mere subject,
and aimed at producing
an effect by purely artistic
means. Gracious studies
of light, and intimate views
of forest paths, and distant
huts and meadowland, took
the place of pompous dra-^
matic efforts, wild mountain landscapes, and glaring fireworks,
A knowledge of the English water-colour artists De Wint and
Cox was communicated by Jafnes Fairman, who was by birth a
Scot, while the three brothers William^ Peter^ and Thomas Morgan
have been manifestly influenced by Turner in their strong sense
of the effect of light. A couple of Dutch emigrants, Albert
van Beest and F, de Haas^ painted the first sea-pieces, and were
followed by Harry Chase, who had gone to Holland in 1862
to study under Kruseman van Elten and Mesdag. These were
no longer scenes with a dramatic intention — ^ships wrecked in a
storm upon the cliffs or labouring against high-running waves —
such as C. Petersen, W. E. Norton, and A. T Bricher had a pre-
dilection for painting. On the contrary, they were quiet
representations of the simple poetry of the sea. James M. Hart
and Hamilton Hamilton, under the influence of the Fontainebieau
school, turned to the portrayal of the American forests, resplendent
in red and yellow foliage, and of animals lying on the rich
meadows. The most important of these men was William Morris
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461
Niw York: AppMon,}
Mosler: "The Prodigal Son."
//««/, who from 1846
had been for some time
a sculptor in Diisseldorf,
and had undergone a
long apprenticeship under
Couture in Paris and
Millet in Barbizon before
he returned to settle
down in Boston. In
particular he has painted
certain pieces with sheep
which approach Charles
Jacque in delicacy.
Such essentially was
the result of the career
of American art up to
i860. America had in-
•dividual painters, but no
formed school. But the ambition to stand on a level with other
nations was gaining ground, and to do this it was necessary to
5tudy systematically abroad. Earlier artists had only left America
■on brief trips which left no permanent impressions; the next
generation made itself at home all over Europe. Diisseldorf,
to which Leutze and Bierstadt had directed attention, was no
longer even thought of as a training-school. As for Munich, it
wavered indecisively between Kaulbach and Piloty. But Paris
enjoyed all the greater celebrity. Here, under G6r6me, Lemuel
Everett Wilwarth^ who was a teacher of the New York School
■of Art, had already gained the principles of knowledge with
which he impressed his pupils. Hence had come Francois Regis
Gignoux and Asher Brown-Durand^ two French landscapists who
made a great sensation in New York during the sixties. So
Paris became for the American generation of i860 what it had
teen for the Germans of 1850. And, treating the Parisian
Americans alone, it would be easy to write a short history of
French art, for they distinctly reflect the French methods of
various epochs.
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462 MODERN PAINTING
When the first Americans came to Paris the new seeds planted
by Courbet and the Fontainebleau landscapists had not yet forced
their way to the surface. The scholastic and externally brilliant
painting of Couture was the centre of interest. Bouguereau had
achieved his earliest successes, and the cold porcelain style of
G6r6me was an object of admiration. And there was also the
discreetly chastened peasant- painting of Breton, whose "Return
of the Reapers" had placed him in 1853 in the front rank of
French genre painters. To these masters the first Americans
who came to study in Paris most naturally turned.
The old genre painting found its representative in Henry
Mosler^ who was born in 1840 in New York. His most lasting
impressions he received in the years when Knau$ made his suc-
cesses in Paris, and when Breton came forward with his earliest
pictures of peasant life. Mosler's works — for example, "The
Tinker," "The Harvest Festival," "The Last Moments," and
" The Prodigal Son " — are good genre pictures, which might be
ascribed to Vautier or Bokelmann, or one of the French painters
of the village tale, say Brion, Marchal, or Breton. .
. , Bouguereau's scented Neo-Classicism with a tendency to be
feebly fanciful had its satellite in Carl Gutherz^ a Swiss by
birth, who had come to Paris as a boy in 185 1. One of his
principal pictures, which was painted in 1888, was called "Lux
Incarnationis." From the manger in Bethlehem there shone a
beaming light. The air was filled with heavenly squadrons,,
spreading throughout space like gleaming and hovering clouds.
In the foreground beautiful, slender young angels, with many-
coloured wings, issued from the glittering throng, with golden
aureoles crowning their young heads. There were nude little
boy * angels also, following them and scattering the flowers of
heaven, which turned to rosy clouds. All these angels, however,
were modernized French Cinquecento angels ; they were feeble
and mawkish every one of them, and suggested a monotonous
atmosphere of perfume. " Ecce Homo," " Sappho," " The Temp-
tation of St. Anthony," "The Golden Legend," and "The
Midsummer Night's Dream" are titles of other pictures of his
which are as motley as they are feeble.
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463
New yon; Appieion.]
Bridgman : " In the Harem."
When translated into American, G6r6me means Frederick
A, Bridg?nan. From 1863 to 1866 he was steel -engraver to
an American company for making banknotes, and thus well
prepared when he came to Gerdme, the hard Classicist, whom
he resolutely followed to the East He trod the soil of Africa
for the first time in 1872, travelled through Algiers and Egypt>
and then became the painter of these regions — and not alone
of their present populations, but of their classical past as well.
His "Burial of a Mummy" won the gold medal at the Paris
World Exhibition of 1878, and in 1881 he was able to bring
together three hundred and thirty pictures of the East at an
exhibition in New York. Under G^rdme Bridgman acquired
great dexterity, learning from him all that was to be learnt ; he
is indeed a little more flexible than his teacher, though at
bottom a hard Classicist also. White draperies, dark skin tints,
shining marble and keen blue atmosphere, ethnographical accuracy
and a taste for anecdote, are the leading characteristics of his
pictures. He does not fail to specify that his negro festival, for
example, takes place "In Blidah;" and when he shows a beauty
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MODERN PAINTING
Munich : Han/stdngl.}
Weeks: "The Last Journey."
of the harem fallen upon by a sensual assassin in the series
called "The Sacrifice of Virtue," he pays tribute to G6r6me's
delight in executioners. His white, cold porcelain pictures are,
like those of G6r6me, judiciously composed, deftly carried out,
and exceedingly pretty in detail, but they are hard and motley,
paltry and inexpressive of temperament
After working under G6r6me, Edwin Lord Weeks (born in
Boston in 1849) penetrated yet further into the East The
earliest pictures which he sent to the Paris Salon represented
scenes from remote parts of Morocco. With caravans organized
by himself he pressed into the hidden interior of this empire to
paint the strange reality. Not to become monotonous, he then
passed to India, which he explored in all directions, finding
that scenery, architecture, and the ways of men provided him
with a yet greater wealth of materials. With peculiar delight
he lingered in the sacred city of Benares, on the banks of the
Ganges, where pagoda follows pagoda and mosque follows
mosque, and the steam of the funeral piles where the corpses
of devout Hindoos are burning mounts into the air. The
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46s
iBrauH photo.
Stewart: "The Hunt Ball."
{By pgrmisaion of Messrs. Ad. Braun <S* Co., tht owners of th§ copyright.)
Streets swarm with figures clad in white and with white
turbans, and protected from the rays of the sun by huge and
gaudy umbrellas. Brown and half-naked men and women
occupied in washing clothes squat upon the bank ; and slender
dark-skinned girls with fans of Indian palm walk along past
dazzling marble palaces. In his studies from Hindostan Weeks
has portrayed with great knowledge of Indian nature the
pictorial and grotesque features of the Hindoos, and the
splendour of burning sunlight shed over all their doings. The
intense white tropical sun pours down upon the white marble
temples, gleams upon the variegated silken costumes, broods
upon the brown skin of the people, glitters upon the tails of
peacocks and the gold-embroidered hangings of the elephants.
And it is only Verestchagin's Oriental pictures which reach
such a dazzling tropical effect.
A third pupil of G^rdme, Harry Humphrey Moore, turned to
Japan, though before doing so he went through a second
course of apprenticeship, for he worked under Fortuny in Rome.
The latter gave him the pungency and sparkle of his painting,
and as, some dozen years ago, the bold, capricious pictures
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466 MODERN PAINTING
of the Spaniard were deemed worth their weight in gold, the
refined Japanese studies of Moore, glittering in red and yellow,
are at present much sought after in America.
Julius L. Stewart, a Parisian from Philadelphia, and the
son of an American collector who possesses the best pictures
of Fortuny, reversed the course of Moore — that is to say, he
had been a pupil of Fortuny's pupil Zamacois before he placed
himself under G6r6me — and the lively variety of colour and
spirited improvization of his works bear witness to his artistic
descent. In result of Fortuny 's influence, Stewart has become a
thorough man of the world, a painter of society, and one of capti-
vating grace, whose " Hunt Ball " and " Five-O'Clock Tea " were
amongst the most refined pictures of the Paris Exhibition of 1889.
Straitened by no old artistic traditions, the Americans
had not any occasion to do homage to conservative opinions
in their painting. The words Classicism and Naturalism had
no meaning for them. They merely repaired to the studios
where they believed themselves able to learn most. Having
given a preference in the beginning to academicians of the
Ecole des Beaux Arts, they were the first who afterwards went
with the new movement in Paris which set in the direction of
landscape and Naturalism. Even those who studied under
Bonnat and Carolus Duran in the beginning of the seventies
did not remain faithful to the method of their teachers, but
with an astonishing instinct found out the masters to whom the
future belonged. Counsel was sought from Manet and Monet,
Bastien-Lepage and Dagnan-Bouveret, Millet and Cazin, in turn.
In many of these Americans it is only their particular mitier that
is interesting, what the Parisians call faire les Rousseau, /aire
les Carriere, faire les Bastien. And in all one recognizes certain
influences, whether they follow the landscapists of 1830, move
in the train of Puvis de Chavannes or Besnard, or infest the
neighbourhood of Giverny to study the bold atmospheric vibra-
tions of Claude Monet. But as they never follow old-fashioned
models, but invariably the most modern, they are characteristic,
if not of American, at all events of the most novel tendencies
of French painting, and that in a very striking way.
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467 ;■,!
Nno York : AppMon,}
Pearce: "The Shepherdess/
{By ptrmissioH of th§ Artist.)
Charles Sprague Pearce of Boston, who came to Bonnat
in 1873, when he was two-and-twenty, and has since lived
on the Seine as one of the finest artists of the American
colony, has a preference for Picardy. His shepherdesses,
peasant girls, and women chopping wood or minding their
herds, are the works of a man who acquired a forcible
technique under Bonnat and studied Bastien-Lepage with under-
standing.
Then there is William J, Dannat^ a broad painter, who
began his studies in Munich, and then went to Munkacsy in
Paris. Now he is a man upwards of forty, working as teacher
at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and notable as a spirited observer
of the pictorial peculiarities of Spain. He is a dandy of art
for whom conventional beauty is a thing utterly thrashed out,
a juggler of the brush who can do whatever he likes, and there-
fore likes to show all that he can do. His earliest pictures —
" A Quartette," " A Sacristy in Arragon," and so forth — obviously
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MODERN PAINTING
Pans: BoiU8od-Valadon,\
Dannat : " Spanish Women."
{By p€rmiBsum of tfu Ariiit,)
owe their existence to similar works of Manet At present
Degas is his ideal, and the study of artificial light his field of
experiment The representation of a Spanish ca// chantant
made him the enfant terrible of the Munich Exhibition in 1892.
Six rouged and squalling Spanish girls, clattering castanets,
and each more hideous than the other, are sitting upon a bench
s^ainst a light grey background. The electric light falling
full upon them makes a caricature of every colour, and plays
upon their faces in violet, pale red, green, and blue reflections.
The whole thing looked like an audacious tavern sign, and it
was only noticed by those who were not disposed to lose their
temper that the scene had been observed with the ready instinct
of a Japanese, and painted alia prima with a sureness which
only few living artists could command.
Alexander Harrison has made a close study of Besnard and
Cazin. He has not painted much, but every one of his pictures
was a palpable hit The earliest and most unassuming, a small
landscape, discreet and delicate in its effect, displayed a stream-
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469
Pmris: Batssod-ValadonJ]
Harrison: "In Arcady."
let and trees, in the midst of which a gap allowed the sight of
a peaceful landscape in the light of evening. The second,
"In Arcady," was one of the finest studies of light which have
been painted since Manet. The manner in which the sunlight
fell upon the high grass and slender trees, its rays gliding over
branch and shrub, touching the green blades like shining gold,
and glancing over the nude bodies of fair women — herje over a
hand, here over a shoulder, and here again over the bosom — was
painted with such virtuosity, felt with such poetry, and so free
from all the heaviness of earth that one hardly had the sense
of looking at a picture at all. The luminous painting of Besnard
had here reached its final expression, and the summit of classic
finish was surmounted. His third picture was called " The Wave."
To seize such phenomena of nature in their completeness — things
so fickle and so hard to arrest in their mutability — had been
the chief study of French painters since Manet When Harrison
exhibited his " Wave," sea-pieces by Duez, Roll, and Victor Binet
were also in existence ; but Harrison's " Wave " was the best
of them all. The rendering of water, the crystal transparency
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MODERN PAINTING
I^ew iork: Apple ton,]
Gay: "The Sewing-School."
of the billows with their changing light, was in this case so
extraordinarily faithful that one was tempted to declare that
the water of the others was absolutely solid, compared with
this elemental essence of moisture. If one looked long at this
heaving and subsiding tide, this foaming revel of waves, one
almost felt a sort of giddiness, and fancied one's self riding
upon the high-running crests of the billows over the bottomless
sea. Air and the motion of waves were, during the following
years, the chief objects of Harrison's study. In his picture of
1892 a greenish-yellow evening sky arched over a motionless
stretch of green-yellow sea, where nude women were bathing
in the full play of green-yellow reflections. The entire picture
was almost one monotony of greenish yellow in its discreetly
wavering hues ; but with what delicacy were these varieties of
tone differentiated ! What play there was of light ! how the
sea flashed and glittered ! and with what a bloom the bodies
of the women rose against the air ! Evening lay dreamy and
darkling over a still woodland lake in his picture of 1893. A
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471
funs: uvunsod'yaiadon.^
Melchers: "The Sermon.**
skiff, with the naked figure ot a young man in it, sailed in this
far-off solitude. The effect was large and solemn, unostentatious
and yet great.
A pupil of Bonnat, Walter Gay of Boston, seems to feel
specially at home amongst the peasants of the west of France,
and, with that rather tiresome frankness of Northern painters — a
frankness which fails to express the temperament of the artist
— he studies the manners of the people where they are primitive
and naive. Through large windows hung with thin curtains
the bright daylight falls into the clean rooms of peasants,
gleaming on the boards of the floor, the shining tops of the
tables, and the white caps of the women, who sit at their
work sewing ; it is the familiar problem of light for which
Liebermann, Kuehl, and Uhde have also a predilection.
Eugene Vail^ who was influenced by Mesdag and De Nittis,
shrouds his Dutch sea-pieces and pictures of the port of
London in a heavy, melancholy mist. Walter MacEwen of
Chicago paints interiors with delicate light, moist sea air, and
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MODERN PAINTING
Aig^^g ~%
-^^^^■^
.. 1
f^ -J . ■^tjJ^T^^^pjh^^ ■
^^^^^^H^P^^^^K *■ ^^^^^^^^^^H
HM^SMfc^ Y N^ggjd
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Paris ; Boussod- ValadoM.'\
Hitchcock: "Maternity.*'
monotonous dunes with labourers returning in the evening from
their day's work.
Before migrating to Paris both of these painters had long
worked in Holland, whither Liebermann had shown the way
at the close of the seventies, and where Gari Melchers and
George Hitchcock are occupied at the present time.
Gari Melchers^ once a pupil of the Classicists Boulanger and
Lefebure, has something thoroughly Dutch in his temperament,
as indeed his name would indicate, only he lacks the peculiar
tenderness of the Dutch. Like the Dutch amongst whom he
lives, he paints scenes from the life of peasants and fishermen
in Holland, and has discovered a peculiarly congenial field of
study in the plain, whitewashed village churches of the country.
His first effort of this kind, "The Sermon" of 1886, was
painted in a very robust style, and seen with sincerity. A few
peasant women, in their picturesque costume, are sitting piously
following the words of the preacher, whom one does not see,.
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473
[Bassano photo.
George Hitchcock.
though the expression of the
faces IS painted so convincingly
that one seems to hear him. Gari
Melchers is, indeed, a sincere and
quiiet observer, and approaches
nature with energy, though he
looks into the world with the
cold objectivity of a camera.
His figures are heavy and
motionless, his pictures arid and
wanting in poetry ; they are all
flooded with the same hard
Northern daylight. In the pre-
sence of his picture " The Lord's
Supper," painted, as it is, in such
a staid and matter-of-fact style,
one almost feels compassion for people whose religion is so
entirely without any sort of mystical grace. The church itselt
IS bald and monotonous ; and the dull blue, green, and grey
colours of the dresses, which give the picture its peculiarly
chill and arid tone, are in keeping with the church.
George Hitchcock^ who also lives in Egmond, unites to the
Dutch phlegm a certain delicate, English Preraphaelite nuance.
One knows the Dutch spring, when, through the famous culture
of flowers, towns like Haarlem and Egmond are surrounded with
a dazzling, variegated carpet of tulips, dark and bright red, violet
and sky-blue, white and bordered with yellow, when the air is
filled with intoxicating perfume and the nightingales warble
in the green woods. A picture like this, an actual picture
entitled "Tulip Growing," was the foundation of Hitchcock's
reputation in the Salon of 1885. In one of his later works
a field of white lilies stretched along beside a green meadow.
The flowers had shot up high and almost reached to the
girdle of the young country girl who moved, grave and
thoughtful, through the idyllic landscape. A faint circkt of
beams hovered above her head ; it was Mary awaiting the
joyous tidings of the angel. The dunes, too, with their tall
vou in. 31
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MODERN PAINTING
Magwsint of Art. ^
Sargent: "A Venetian Street-Scene."
(J5y ptrmisaion of the Artist.)
grey - green grass^
and their damp and
melancholy atmo-
sphere, he had a
delight in painting.
Here stands a shep-
herdess — one with
the name of Jeanne
d'Arc — lost in
thought beside her
flock, and here
young peasant
wives, accompanied
by their children,,
wend their way home from their work in the fields.
While these Americans at work in Holland acquire a certain
provincial character, a cordial and phlegmatic trait, in harmony
with their place of resort, those in London are accomplished
men of the world, who have travelled much and are graceful,
subtile, and scintillating. In Paris they have absorbed every-
thing that is to be learnt there, and they combine with their
Parisian ckic a fragrant Anglo-Saxon aroma.
At their head stands John Singer Sargent^ one of the most
dazzling men of talent in the present day. Born in Florence
in 1856, Sargent is still a young man. In Florence and in
France he was brought up arhid brilliant surroundings, and
thus acquired as a boy what is wanting to many painters
throughout their whole lives — refined and exquisite taste. Having
copied portraits after the old Venetians, he began to study
under Carolus Duran, and he is now what Carolus Duran once
was — a painter of the most mundane elegance. Indeed, com-
pared with Sargent's women, those of Duran are like village
belles. Psychological analysis of character, it is true, is a thing
as alien to him as it was to his teacher ; but how thoroughly
successful he is in reproducing the fragrant odeur de fevime^.
and in catching the physiognomy, fashion, gesture, tone,
and spirit of a dignified aristocracy! How vividly his women
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475
Mag(tzin€ of Art.'\
Sargent: Portrait of Himself.
{By pgrmiasioH of tht Artist.)
Stand out in their exquisitely
tasteful dresses ! No one has
painted those professional
beauties who consecrate every-
thing to self-adoration with a
more complete understanding
of what he was about. No
one is so triumphant in ar-
resting the haughty reserve of
a woman, the delicate com-
plexion of a girl, a flitting
smile, an ironical or timid
glance, a mien, a turn of the
head, or a tremor of the lips.
No one has such a compre-
hension of the eloquent grace
of delicate,, sensitive hands playing with a fan or quietly folded
together. He is the painter of subtile and often strange and
curious beauty, conscious of itself and displaying its charms in
the best light — a fastidious artist of exquisite taste, the most
refined painter of feminine portraits of the present day. His
portrait of Mrs. Boit made an impression of power like a
Velasquez, and those of Mrs. Henry White, Mrs. Comyns Carr,.
and the group of the Misses Vickers, one of very great dis-
tinction. In the year 1887 he painted the portrait of Mrs.
Playfair, a lady with a majestic figure, standing in yellowish-
white silk with a dark green mantle in front of a white and
red background ; that of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth was
painted in 1890.
But the smile of the modern sphinx is not his only theme,,
for he also renders the grace of high-bred children ; and as a
painter of children he is equalled by Renoir alone. The four
little girls playing in a great dark hall in his "Portrait of the
Misses F." were exquisite indeed, and painted with a veracity
that was entirely natve and novel ; all the poses were natural, all
the colours subtile, those of the furniture, the great Japanese
vases, the bright vaporous dresses, the silk stockings. In a
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MODERN PAINTING
TTT
Gum. dts Beaux- Arts.}
Sargent: "El Jaleo."
(By permUtion of tht ArtisU)
picture of 1891 a] most enchanting young girl, seen full-face, sat
bolt-upright upon a plain high wooden chair in front of dark
wainscoting, looking dreamily and unsuspectingly before her, out
of widely opened brown eyes, like those of a gazelle ; while in
the charming picture "Carnation Lily Lily Rose," which now
hangs in the South Kensington Museum, a fine effect of light d la
Besnard is united with delicate observation of child-life. The
scene takes place at the hour of dusk in a pretty garden nook
belonging to an English country place. Amid green leaves and
rosy flowers growing thickly, two little girls, with the gravest
faces in the world, are intent on lighting great Japanese lanterns,
the light of which struggles with the twilight, casting tremulous
reddish beams upon the foliage and the children's dresses.
Sargent is French in his entire manner, and, above every-
thing, a painter for painters. Of poetry and inward absorption
he has no trace. Like Besnard, he is a subtile virtuoso, though
undoubtedly an artist who challenges the admiration of his
fellows, while the great public stand in perplexity before his
pictures. His mitier interests him, and therefore he interests
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477
others. His pic-
tures, moreover,
always show the
work of the hand.
Every stroke can be
followed. Every-
thing lives and
breathes and moves
and trembles.
Some scenes from
Venice and from
Spanish cafh chan-
tantSy perhaps, show
the full degree of
his ability. Need-
less to state he has
not represented the
Grand Canal nor
the Palace of St
Mark, for anything
so banal and thread-
bare would hardly
suit his taste. On
the contrary, his
views from Venice
only contain scenes
from dark holes
and corners of the town, or from low halls where a sunbeam is
coyly falling. Or a pair of girls, wrapped in dirty greenish-yellow
shawls, are flitting through the streets in their little wooden
shoes like lizards. In 1882 he painted a gipsy dance with a
gallant maestria which would have delighted Goya. Degas
alone would have rendered the movement of the dancing-girl,
in all her melting lines, with such astonishing sureness of hand,
and Manet alone would have rendered the guitarrero with so
much naturalness. One of his later masterpieces, " Carmencita,"
a portrait of the Spanish dancer, dressed in orange and advancing
Sargent : " Carhencita.'
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478 MODERN PAINTING
to the footlights with her hand resting upon her hip, has come
into the possession of the Muste Luxembourg.
Together with Sargent amongst the London Americans, Henry
Muhmiann has specially come to the front at recent exhibitions.
Trained in Munich, he now works by preference in Hastings,
and amid the dark cliffs of this old seaside town he has painted
landscapes of a dim, melancholy, and earnest depth. With
their fine instinct for novelty, their presage of the tendency of
the future, the Americans are well able to estimate the value
of European schools of art. For this reason they seek neither
Berlin nor Diisseldorf amongst German centres of art, but
only Munich, nor did they come even here until Munich had
•decisively joined in the great modern movement
In Munich Carl Marr has acquired the reputation of being
an artist of uncommon soundness. He cannot be called par-
ticularly spirited nor particularly intimate in feeling ; and many
young painters shake their heads with indifference when they
behold his pictures — wearisome and sound, sound and wearisome.
Marr is no stormy revolutionary; he is a worker, a born
professor for an academy, whose talent is made up of the
elements of will, work, study, and patience. He is possessed
of an arid precision, to which it is not difficult to do justice,
and through this quiet, sure-footed Naturalism, free from all
extravagances, he has won many admirers — not indeed amongst
epicures, but at any rate amongst the conservatives in art
His large " Procession of Flagellants," by which he introduced
himself to the artistic world in 1889, was a good, serious, historical
picture, which had no false vehemence. One could not go
into great raptures at seeing a bright historical painting taking
the place of one which was brown, but it was impossible not
to recognize the draughtsmanlike qualities and the courage
and endurance requisite for illustrating so big a canvas. His
next picture, "Germany in 1806," was more intimate and sensitive
in feeling : in subject, indeed, it was not entirely free from features
savouring of German genre and Die Gartenlaube^ but from a
technical standpoint it had interest, since it bore witness, for
the first time, to the observation of twilight in an interior,
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AMERICA 479
after a period in which brightness of painting had been insisted
on in a one-sided fashion. Even in his "Summer Day" of
1892 he showed that he had the art of producing a genre
picture intelligible to the great public with the resources of
modern plein-air painting. The girls, and mothers and children,
sitting under the leaves in the garden, were pretty enough to
delight the Sunday crowd of sightseers, while the brilliancy
of the sun rippling through the foliage, and the motes of light
playing upon the ground and the human figures, were inter-
preted with consummate ability. In fact Marr has the capacity
of satisfying every one. His pictures attract the most incompetent
judges because they tell a story, and yet the soundness of
their technique is so great that they cannot offend the most
-exacting.
Charles Frederick Ulrich^ who was born in New York, and
afterwards became a pupil of Lofftz and Lindenschmit, has
found much that is pretty to paint in Italy. In fact he takes a
place in the group represented by Ludwig Pasini, Zezzos, Nono,
Tito, Cecil van Haanen, Franz Ruben, Eugene Blaas, William
Logsdail, Henry Woods, and others. The richly coloured city of
the lagunes is his domain — not romantic Venice, but the Venice
of the day, with its narrow ways and pretty girls, Venice with
its glittering effects of light and picturesque figures in the streets.
Laundresses and women making bouquets sit laughing and
jesting over their work — the same coquettish girls with black or
red hair, pearly white teeth, and neat little slippers who move
also in the works of Tito. What distinguishes Ulrich from the
Italians is merely that he loves refinement and softness in making
transitions, mild lustre of colour, and distinction and sobriety in
general tone, after the fashion of the English water-colour artists,
in contradistinction to the pyrotechnics of Fortuny.
Mention should be made also of the portraits and unpre-
tentious sketches from street-life in Munich by Robert Koehler
of Milwaukee, and of good landscapes and etchings by Sion
Wenban. Orrin Peck attracted attention in 1889 by a picture
named "From Him," a thoughtful piece of Dusseldorfian work
Avith modern technique. And Hermann Harhvich^ a pupil of
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Lofftz, chiefly finds his subjects in South Tyrol and the North
of Italy: interiors with grandmothers and children, laundresses
upon sunny meadows, or winter landscapes with cattle-dealers
and shivering animals.
True it is that all these painters reveal nothing American. They
are, indeed, hardly to be distinguished from their French, English,
and German colleagues. But the swiftness and ability with which
America came to support herself upon European crutches in the
matter of technique is all the more admirable. All these men
have become good soldiers in the armies of foreign leaders. They
have learnt to stand firmly on their feet in Europe, and that in
itself is a great achievement. Even as late as the year 1878-
Mr. G. W. Sheldon was able to write in an article upon American
art published in Harper's Magazine : " The great defect of
American art — to speak in the spirit of self-examination and
soberness — is ignorance. American artists, with a few conspicuous
exceptions, have not mastered the science of their profession.
They did not learn early enough how to draw ; they have not
practised drawing persistently enough or long enough. . . . They
have not clear ideas of what art is and of what art demands."
But now after less than twenty years exactly the opposite has
come to pass. What is striking in all American pictures is their
eminent technical ability. There is displayed in these pictures
a strenuous discipline of talent, an eff'ort to probe the subject as
artistically as possible, a thoroughness seldom equalled even by
the " thoroughness " of the Germans. And technique being the
basis of every art, the groundwork for the growth of a specially
American school has been thus created.
It is, of course, impossible for one who is not an American
to make for himself any clear sketch of transatlantic art But
according to the accounts which reach us from the United States,
a powerful artistic movement, expressing itself by the foundation
of numerous galleries, art schools, and art unions, must have
passed through the country during the last twenty years. In
every really large town there are industrial museums and picture
galleries, and sometimes these are of great importance ; the
modern section of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art,
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AMERICA 481
in particular, is one of the best of the kind. Academies of Art
have sprung up in all directions, the most distinguished being
those of Boston, New York, Newhaven, and Philadelphia, beside
which there are comprehensive private collections. Their illus-
trated magazines are supported by a most extensive circle of
readers, and are sometimes periodicals of such high artistic
character that Europe has nothing similar that can be placed
beside them. The Century and Harper's Magazine^ for instance,
count amongst their illustrators men whose names are held in
esteem in both hemispheres, such as Edwin A, Abbey ^ Charles 5.
Reinhart^ Howard Pyle^ Joseph Pennell^ and Alfred Parsons. More-
over a new school for the art of woodcut engraving has come
into being, with Frederick Jungling, Closson, and Timothy Cole
at its head, and these men stand to their European colleagues as
a spirited etcher to a neat line-engraver in copper. And even as
regards painting, the Paris Exhibition of 1889 and the Munich
Exhibition of 1892 bore witness that an individual movement was
already stirring in America, and that American art was no longer
an appanage of European, but an independent growth, an
organism which had set itself free from Europe. In the Paris
Exhibition of 1855 the Americans had no section to themselves.
In 1867, it is true, they had three sides of a small inner gallery,
but only excited interest amongst their compatriots. In 1878
they were represented by a larger quantity of pictures and better
quality. But in 1889 the American section was one of the most
admirable in the World Exhibition. Not only were there painters
who, after they had become known in Europe, had continued to
work energetically according to the principles acquired in the old
world, but there were likewise young artists who had completed
their schooling across the ocean, and boldly went their own way,
untouched by European influences. Moreover older artists were
discovered, men whose relationship to our own schools it was by
no means easy to establish, though they took a place beside the
most individual masters in Europe.
And yet one is not brought into the " Wild West " by these
American masters. Hordes of Indians, grazing buffaloes, burning
prairies and virgin forests, gold-diggers, fur-traders, and Roman-
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MODERN PAINTING
Ntw York : AppUion.^
Homer: *'The Negro School/'
ticism of the ** Leather Stocking " order may be sought in their
works in vain. The many-sided IVinslow Hovur^ the painter of
Uncle Tom's Cabin, is striking as the only one of them who
represents in his subjects what we should understand as peculiarly
American. He took an interest in the coloured population, and
had the secret of kindling an interest for them in Europeans also.
His negro studies, his representations of the land and the people,
his pictures of the American soil with the race of men whose home
it is, are often rather narve in painting, but they are honest and
sincere, baptized in American water. He was a vigorous realist
who went straight to the mark and painted his open-air scenes in
sunlight fluently from nature. Thus he was the first energetic
representative of open-air painting in America.
Moreover Alfred Kappes has sometimes given felicitous
renderings of negro life. G, Brushy on the other hand, borrows
his subjects from the life of the Indians, while Robert Blum
paints Japanese street-scenes full of sunlight and lustrous
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483
Ntw York: AppUton.]
Inness: a Landscape.
colour. For the rest, American art is a rhuvi^ of the art of
Europe, just as the race itself is a medley of the civilized
peoples of the old world. Of the peculiarity of life in the
West it has nothing so original and unexpected to reveal as
the things which Mark Twain and Bret Harte have told in
literature. Yet it is an exceedingly tasteful rhumiy and if
America still counts as a convenient market for the commercial
wares of Europe, this does not mean that there are no painters
in the country, but merely that American painters are too
proud to satisfy the demands of picture-dealers. This reaction
found its weightiest expression in 1878, in the foundation of
the Society of American Artists, the first article in whose
statutes was that they did not accept Cabanel, Bouguereau,
and Meyer of Bremen as their leaders, but Millet, Corot, and
Rousseau. The founders of this society were Walter Shirlaw^
who had come home from Munich, George Fuller, who had
lived upon his farm in quiet retirement, far from the artistic
life of capitals, George Inness, Wyatt Eaton, Morris Hunt, and
Thomas Moran, It is the chief merit of these men that they
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484 MODERN PAINTING
made the noble art of the Fontainebleau colony the basis of
artistic effort in America.
George Inness made himself for the first time known in Germany
in 1892 by three landscapes. " Sunset," painted in 1888, displayed
a few withered trees upon a lonely heath, and a blue-black
sky, where a deep red sun broke forth from the rent clouds.
The second picture, "Winter Morning," represented a season
which is dear to English painters likewise — the verge of spring
before nature grows verdant, and when the trees and shrubs
show their earliest buds, and a suggestion of coming blossom
peeps through the remnants of the snow which still cover the
fields with a dirty brownish grey. The third picture, " A
Calm Day," displayed a few trees on the border of a lake in
the dusk : the forms of nature here were merely a medium by
which the painter represented the play of finely balanced
tones.
It then became known that George Inness, a master whom
his contemporaries had not known how to value, and who first
received his laurels from the younger generation, was born as
early as May ist, 1825, in Newburgh (Orange County), near
the romantic banks of the Hudson, where simple, rustic, and
idyllic landscapes stretch hard by the virgin-forest scenery of
America. When he began to paint, R. Gignoux, who had come
from France and held the masters of Barbizon in great
veneration, had just entered into the full possession of his
powers. At his studio Inness beheld the first landscapes of the
Fontainebleau school, and became more familiarly acquainted
with their works through a residence in Europe extending
from 1 87 1 to 1875. In these later years he worked upon his
most important creations. His life, like that of Corot, was a
constant renovation of artistic power. Like Corot, he began
with views from Italy. Simple pictures from the Roman
Campagna alternated with straightforward representations of the
Gulf of Naples. Then, for a time, he became a Romanticist,
embellishing the wild woods of America with angels and
pilgrims, monks and crucifixes. But in the sixties the marvels
of light became his field of study, and some of the pictures
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485
Munich: Hanfaiangl.]
Hassam : " Seventh Avenue, New York,**
which he painted at that time — for example, the large work
"Light Triumphant" — might have been signed by Turner.
Grey clouds shift across the firmament, and behind them stands
the shining globe of the sun ; all the sky quivers like fluid
gold ; shining yellow is the stream which flows through the
meadow ; and sunbeams ripple through the branches of the
trees and glance upon the brown glistening hide of the cattle
and the white horses of the cowboys. Sad and sombre, and
covered with thick darkness, was "The Valley of the Shadow
of Death," with the distant cross upon which the body of the
Saviour hung shining. But in these days this same Romanticist
has purged himself and become quiet in manner, classic, like
a painter of the Fontainebleau school whose name one cannot
recall. He loves the world when it lies in a solemn dusk,
rolling country with leafless boughs and withered bushes ; though
he also delights in the red, glowing splendours of sunset and
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MODERN PAINTING
Munich : Han/stdngl.]
Vonnoh: "A Poppy Field.**
the dark thunderstorm. At times he is broad and powerful
like Rousseau, at times delicate with the Elysian sentiment of
Corot, here idyllically rustic like Daubigny, and here full of
vehement lament like Dupr6. All his pictures are tone-
symphonies, broadly painted, deeply harmonized, and in perfect
concord. And the history of art must hold him in honour as-
one of the most delicate and many-sided landscapists of the
century.
Wyatt Eaton became the American Millet Having been*
first a pupil of Leutze in Diisseldorf and then for many years-
in Barbizon, he began to paint reapers, wood-choppers, and
peasants resting from their work — in fact all those country
motives naturalized in art by the poetic genius of Jean Francois.
Wyatt Eaton's talent, however, has not the robust largencss-
or the complete rusticity of the master of Gruchy ; nevertheless
it holds itself aloof from the manufactured elegance by which
Jules Breton obtained admission into the drawing-room for
Millet's peasants. His representation of country life is sincere
and honest, though his painting, like Millet's, has a certain
laboured heaviness. Men, and trees, and haystacks are touched
by the same oily light.
A younger artist, Dwight William Tryon, who has been since
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487
1885 the Director
of the Hartford
school of art, had
his eye disciplined
under Daubigny.
There may be seen
in his pictures, as
in Daubigny's, a
silvery grey atmo-
sphere, against
which the tracery
of young foliage
stands out in re-
lief, green shining
meadows and softly
rippling streams,
corn-fields, apple-
trees, and fruit-
gardens. In his
delicate little pic-
ture " The Rising Moon," exhibited in the Munich Exhibition
of 1892, the parting flush of evening plays over a bluish-green
haystack with a dusky yellow light. His second picture, " Day-
break," displayed a lake and a sleeping town, over which the
grey dawn cast its hesitating beams. In his third picture^
" December," he rendered a strip of sedge and a grey fallow-
ground over which there rested, sad and chill, a grey heavy
stratum of atmosphere, pierced by yellowish streaks of light.
/. Appleton Brown, whose works made a stir in the Salon as
early as the seventies, is compared with Duprd by American
critics. His favourite key of colour is that of dun-coloured
sunset, and against it a gnarled oak or the yellow sail of a small
craft stretches like a dark phantom. That admirable painter of
animals, Peter Moran, turned early from Landseer to Rosa
Bonheur and Troyon. One of his brothers, Thomas Moran,
gave himself up to the study of landscape, and the other,.
Edward, to that of the sea and life upon the strand. They are
Cox : " Evening.'
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MODERN PAINTING
Munich : liftn^iian^Ly
Dewing : " At the Piano."
in every sense American artists, men who borrow their subjects
from American scenery only, depicting it under a peculiarly
brilliant light In Thomas Moran's pictures from the virgin
forests of the South all objects are enveloped in the golden
haze of Turner. Waterfalls and glowing red, blue, and violet
masses of cliff are bathed in sunny mist, in orange, tender blue,
or light green atmosphere. Edward Moran painted fishermen
and fisher-women at their toil or returning home : water and
strand, people and vessels, vanish into a blue haze which de-
composes all outlines. L. C, Tiffany established himself in the
port of New York, and painted charming things which yield in
nothing to those of Vollon : in the foreground are ships and
men at work, and in the background the piquant outline of
New York rising out of the mist, and reflected in the clear
water of the ocean, gilded by the dawn. The works of John
Francis Murphy are full of intimate feeling, and although his
dark regions of wood, sedge-grown pools, and peasant cabins
were painted on the Hudson, they have been seen, in their
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AMERICA
489
Amtrican Art JReviiw.]
WiLUAM Merrit Chase.
delicately toned poetry of nature,
entirely with the eyes of a
Fon tainebleau painter.
The younger men passed
from beauty recalling the old
masters, and the clarity bathed
in radiance which Turner loved,
to the study of more complicated
effects of light. Fire, lamplight,
and sunlight strive for the
mastery upon their canvases.
Childe HassaiHy who returned
some years ago from Paris to
America, has rendered the street-
life of New York in fresh and
fleeting sketches : snow, smoke,
and flaring gaslight pouring
through the shop - windows,
quivering out into the night, and
reflected in an intense blaze upon the faces of men and women.
Julian Alden Weir, son of Robert Walter Weir, the American
Piloty, worked in Paris under G^rdme, though he would seem
to have made a far more frequent study of Cazin. His simple
little pictures — field-paths leading between meadows, narrow
rivulets rippling by the side of dusty roads— have that softly
meditative and tenderly dreamy trait which is the note of
Cazin's landscapes. Another of these painters, N. W. Ranger^
loves the quiet hour when the lighted gaslamps contend
against the fading day, and the electric light pierces the sea of
smoke and mist hanging over the streets with its keen rays.
As befits his Dutch origin, Alexander van Laer has in his sea-
pieces more of a leaning towards Mesdag*s grey tones. Bisbing
paints large landscapes, saturated by light and air, with cows
somnolently resting in the sun ; while Davis has the secret of
interpreting the greyish-blue eff*ects of morning with great
delicacy. And the younger Inness has a fondness for departing
thunder-showers, rainbows, and misty red sunbeams penetrating
VOL. III. 32
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490
MODERN PAINTING
Munich : HanfstdnglJ]
Chase : " In the Park."
in the form of wedges through a sea of mist, and restmg upon
wide stony fields.
Unhackneyed, desperately unhackneyed, unhackneyed to ex-
aggeration are the figure-painters also. That enlivening artist
/. G. Brown^ indefatigable in portraying the street-arabs of
New York ; /. M. C, Hamilton, who based himself upon Alfred
Stevens; the miniature-painter Ignaz Marcel Gaugengigl\ and
even /. Ridgway Knight of Philadelphia, a Bastien-Lepage
transposed into the key of feminine prettiness ; these, with their
smooth, neat, conscientious painting, no longer fit into the
general plan of American art. The younger men* do not waste
their time over such work of detail done with a fine brush, in
addition to which the ordinary grey painting is too simple for
them. Some of them, like Eliuh Vedder and Frederick S.
Churchy move in a grotesquely fantastic world of ideas. Others
attempt the most hazardous schemes of colour, and often excite
the impression that their pictures have not been painted with
the brush at all. In this respect that bold colourist Robert
William Vonnoh reached the extreme limit at the Munich
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AMERICA 491
Exhibition of 1892; His gleaming and flaming picture of a
field of poppies, where a girl was playing, while the glowing
July sun glanced over it, is less like an oil-picture than a relief
in oils. The unmixed red had been directly pressed on to the
canvas from the tube in broad masses, and stood flickering
against the blue air ; and the bluish-green leaves were placed
beside them by the same direct method, white lights being
attained by judiciously managed fragments of blank canvas.
Never yet was war so boldly declared against all the con-
ventional usages of the studio ; never yet were such barbaric
means employed to attain an astounding effect of light. Even
with portrait-painting the most subtile studies of light were
combined : the persons sit before the hearth or beneath a
lamp, irradiated with the light of the fire ; hands, face, and
clothes are covered with reflections of the flame. And Charles
Edmund Tarbelly who, like Besnard, regards the human brain
merely as a medium for perceiving effects of light, is in the
habit of briefly naming his broadly executed pictures of girls
"An Opal" or "An Amethyst" to suit the tone of the pre-
vailing illumination.
But as the Americans were the first to follow Manet's
painting of light, so were they also the first to adopt that
lyricism of colour originated by Watts and Whistler, and now
extending over European painting in wider and wider circles.
Kenyan Cox, a pupil of Gerdme and Carolus Duran, who in
earlier days painted large mythological pictures in the manner
of French Classicism, had in the Munich Exhibition of 1892 a
marvellous nude figure of a woman in front of a deep Titian-
esque group of trees — a work which might have been painted by
a modern Scotchman, so full in tone were the chords of colour
which he struck on it.
A pupil of Boulanger and Lefebure, W. Thomas Dewingy
like Whistler, paints pale, slender women resting in the twilight,
and one of his pictures— a young lady in black silk sitting at
the piano before a silvery grey wall — had in its refined grey
and black tones something of the brilliant, knightly verve which
is elsewhere only to be found in Orchardson. Julius Rolshoven
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492 MODERN PAINTING
who now lives in Cincinnati, after having long painted in Italy,
exhibited pictures from Venice — girls kneeling before the image
of the Virgin at the sound of the Ave Maria, views of the
Doge's palace or of Chioggia — and in these pictures too there
was nothing of the sunny play of light which modem Italians
shed over such scenes ; on the contrary powerful greenish-blue
tones were spread out, with an effect of dark and solemn
gravity.
William Merrit Chase has studied the symphonic harmonies
of the great magician Whistler with the finest understanding for
them. In the seventies Chase counted as one of the most
original amongst the younger pupils of Piloty, and works of
his belonging to that period, such as "The Court Fool" and
the picture of the street-arabs smoking, were good genre
pieces in the German style. But in 1883 he surprised every
one by his vivid portrait of the painter Frank Duvenek, who
was seated, with American nonchalance, facing the back of a
chair, smoking a cigar, as also by his portrait of F. S. Church,
and by some fine landscapes — Venetian canal pictures and
desolate American cliffs. From being a pupil of Piloty he had
become a bold painter in bright tones, revelling in the whitest
sunlight In the decade which has passed since that time
Velasquez, whom he copied in Spain, and Whistler, under
whose influence he was in London, led him forwards from mere
bright painting to that beauty of tone which is now sought
in all quarters of Europe by the most advanced men of the age.
The present Director of the Art Students* League paints, when
he is in the mood, in a very fine and delicate grey, as in the
park-scene entitled "Two Friends." He is bright and full of
bloom when he paints graceful children, slender girls with
brown curling hair, walking in green sunny fields and clothed
in dazzling white, playing at the edge of a pond or jumping
about over gaily coloured skipping-ropes. He revek as a land-
scapist in deep chords of colour recalling Scotch painters,
and makes a sombre and powerful effect in his portrait of
Whistler.
So America has an art of her own. Yet even those Americans
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AMERICA 493
who work in their native land betray an accent less national
than the Danes, for example, or the Dutch ; and national accent
they cannot have because the entire civilization of America, far
more than that of other countries, is exposed to international
influences. They possess no captivating intimacy of emotion,
they know nothing of confidential revelations, but clearness of
eye they have, and deftness of hand, and refined taste, and
they understand admirably the secret of creating an illusion by
technique. Let Europe or America be their home, they are
children of the New World, the most modern amongst the
moderns.
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CHAPTER XLV
GERMANY
Retrospect of the development of German fainting since Menzel and
LeibL—The landscapists had been the first to make the influence
of Fontainebleau operative: Adolf Lier, Adolf Staebli, Otto Frdh-
licher, Josef Wenglein^ Louis Neubert, Carl Heffner,—The Munich
Exhibition of 1879 brings about an acquaintance with Manet and
Bastien-Lepage : Max Liebermann. — The other representatives of
the new art in Berlin : Franz Skarbina, Friedrich Stahl^ Hans
Herrmann, Hugo Vogel, Walter Leistikow, Rein hold Lepsius, Curt
Herrmann, Lesser Ury, Ludwig Dettmann, — Vienna,^ Dussel-
dorf: Arthur Kampf Kdmpffer, Olaf Jernberg,— Stuttgart :
Otto Reiniger, Robert Haug.— Hamburg : Thomas Herbst, —
Carlsruhe: Gustav Schdnleber, Herrmann Baisch, Friedrich Kail-
morgen, Robert Poetzelberger,— Weimar : Theodor Hagen, Baron
Gleichen-Russwurm, L, Berkemeier, R, Thierbach, P, Baum, —
Munich: Bruno Piglhein, Albert Keller, Baron von Haber-
mann. Count Leopold Kalckreuth, Gotthard Kuehl, Paul Hbcker,
H ZUgel, Victor Weishaupt, L. Dill, L. Herterich, Waclaw
Scymanowski, Hans Olde, A, Langhammer, Leo Samberger^ W, Firle,
H von Bartels, W. Keller-Reutlingen, and others.^The illustrators :
Reni Reinicke, H. Schlittgen, Hengeler, Wahle,
C'^ERMANY was longest in putting off the old Adam and
^ joining in the great tendency which was flooding Europe ;
and yet the old Adam had been neither thoroughly French nor
thoroughly German. As late as 1878 the Gazette des Beaux
Arts — the journal best qualified to form an estimate upon works
of art— in its article upon the World Exhibition, was able to
summarize its judgment of the German galleries in these words :
" There are one or two artists of the first rank and many men
of talent, but in other respects German painting is still upon
the level of the schools which had their day amongst us thirty
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GERMANY 495
years ago; this is the solitary school of painting which does
not seem to perceive that the age of railways and World
Exhibitions needs an art different from that of the age of
philosophy and provincial isolation." The pigtail, which in
earlier days had been the mode in other countries, had been
worn so long that it was now piously represented to be "the
German national style." It had vanished out of all recollection
that historical painting had been imported in 1842 from Belgium,
whither it was brought from Paris in 1830. In the course of
years it had become so dear to the Germans that they clung to
it as to a national banner, and founded Art Unions to foster in
Germany a thing which had been buried everywhere else. It
was forgotten that the anecdotic genre had been borrowed from
England in the beginning of the century, and had been in
England, as in France, a mere cloak for artistic weaknesses, or
a sop for a public not yet trained to appreciate art. But when
this phase of the anecdote told in colours had been overcome
elsewhere, it was a pleasant delusion to be able to praise humour
and geniality as the peculiar portion of the Germans.
The Munich painters of costume, belonging to the close of
the seventies, had taken an important step for Germany in
setting painting, pure and simple, in the place occupied by
painted history and painted anecdote ; and their pictures met
with the best reception in Paris. But the critic of the Gazette
pointed out with perfect justice that they merely represented a
stage of transition towards modernity. An ardent study of the
old masters had assisted artists in learning once more how to
paint, at a time when narrative subject was held of chief account
and not painting at all. But the mischief was that everything
was hopelessly well-painted in a way which did not further the
historical development of art by one single step. Artists under-
stood how to adapt the garment of the old painters in a
masterly fashion, to let it fall in graceful folds, to trim it with
joyous colours, but it was, none the less, an old garment, which,
in spite of artificial renovation, was not rendered more beautiful
than it had been when it was new.
The representation of genuine modern humanity began with
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496 MODERN PAINTING
Menzel. During those years he held sway over an isolated
domain of his own. Positive in spirit and keen of eye, he found
material that he could turn to account wherever he was— in
drawing-rooms, upon public promenades, in menageries and
manufactories. He had no stories to tell, and introduced nothing
humorous into his work, but simply kept his eyes open. And
yet even in his method there was a certain narrative element,
something with a savour of genrCy an inclination to be discursive.
He observed the physiognomies and attitudes of his fellow-
creatures with the eyes of Hogarth; and the ceremonial laws of
courtly splendour, when he renders account of them, make an
effect which is more plebeian than aristocratic ; the gaiety
of watering-places, when seen by him, has an almost mournful
comicality. He was a cold analyst, accentuating and defining
acutely what he had first worked out with keenness in his
own mind, but he was deficient in tenderness, quickness of
feeling, -and affection. There is something satirical in his way
of underlining, something heartless in his calculated irony, which
hardly lowers the rapier to spare helpless children and defence-
less women. Few have seen more keenly into the spirit of their
fellows ; but he always stands unapproachably above them, and
deals with them merely to turn spirited epigrams at their
expense.
With Leibl German painting made an advance upon Menzel's
piquant feuilleton style, and one which was in the direction of
simplicity. Its method of interpretation was no longer that
of scoring points : Leibl observes and paints. Moreover he
paints exceedingly well, paints human bodies and articles of
clothing so accurately as to create an illusion, paints all things
tangible with such a fidelity to nature that one is prompted to
lay one's hand upon them. The entire population of Aibling —
peasants, sportsmen, and women — are the uncanny doubles of
nature in Leibl's pictures, and are overwhelming in their resem-
blance to life. All his technical resources have a masterly
sureness in their effect. One cannot but admire such handiwork,
and nevertheless one understands why it was that later painters
aimed at something different.
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And landscape had reached the ideal which had floated
before the younger generation, ever since the masters of Bar-
bizon became more accurately known in Germany, just as little
as figure-painting. A great advance was made when Adolf
Lier, going back to Schleich, set up the Munich painting
expressing the mood of nature in place of the painted
Baedeker dear to the older generation. Lier had been in
Barbizon. The forceful figure of Jules Dupr6 had been near
him, and his first pictures were a revelation for Germany.
And when art which was purely objective and geographical
gave way before the impulse to represent native scenery
in the intimate charm of its moods of light and air, there
came of necessity an increasing and proportionate power of
artistic absorption. Simple scenes from the neighbourhood
of Munich, Schleissheim, and Dachau in moonshine, rain, or
evening light, in spring or in autumn, were Lier's favourite
motives. The rays of the setting sun in his landscapes
are reflected in brown morasses surrounded by trees, or the
evening clearness gleams over snow and ice, or the light of
the noonday sun battles with the dust rising from a road,
where a flock of sheep are passing leisurely forwards. Adolf
Staebliy who was a Swiss, worked on the shores of the Starn-
bergersee and the Ammersee, attracted by their mighty clumps
of trees, majestically grave in outline. His compatriot the
late Otto Frohlicher, who was most decisively impressed by
Theodore Rousseau, painted in the neighbourhood of Dachau
and Peissenberg wide plains in gloomy moods of rain, and
gnarled oaks rising like phantoms against the sky; and. false
and mediocre as he is in his studio pictures, he has left strong
and virile studies breathing of the fresh and delicious fragrance
of the forest, fosef Wenglein rendered the broad, flat, sandy
bed of the Isar near Toelz, the sun struggling against the
vapours rising from moor and meadow, the wooded spines of
the hills fringing the river's bed, and the delicate outlines of
the Upper Bavarian ranges, emerging out of the distance in
shining silvery vapour. Poor Louis Neuberty who was buried
alive, delighted in the lyricism of desolate places : silent coasts
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498 MODERN PAINTING
where the weary waves subside, black autumn nights when
the dark pastures slumber and the murmuring waters sing them
a lullaby. Carl Heffner found congenial motives in the soft
park-like scenery of England: quiet country-houses pleasantly
hidden amongst trees, and lonely pools where lazily shifting
clouds are mirrored.
But neither Lier himself in his later years nor any of his
followers had the reverence for nature necessary for drawing
full advantage from the doctrines of the Fontainebleau school.
It was only in the beginning, at the first acquaintanceship with
paysage intime, that the German painters found refreshment
from this new source. In later times its waters were adulterated
with unseasonable spices. In the days when the gallery tone,
reminiscent of old masters, dominated figure-painting, landscape
was likewise subjected to this influence. The warm golden light
of Lier became a formula with the Munich school. *' Beautiful "
views were followed by a necessity for " beauty " of tone. Nature
was still regarded with preconceived notions, and its simple
poetry, which inspired the French, was gradually transformed
into something the very opposite.
Things were in this condition when the Parisian Impres-
sionists raised the cry after light and sun, and more accurate
knowledge of their innovations was acquired through the French
making such an imposing display as they did at the Munich
Exhibition of 1879. Courbet had risen above the horizon in
Germany in 1869, and now the French exhibitors of 1879 pointed
out the way which led from Courbet to Millet, Manet, and
Bast ien -Lepage.
Soon after a certain change might have been noticed in
German exhibitions. Amid the great historical pictures, and
costume-pieces modelled on the old masters, and antiquated
genre scenes, there hung, scattered here and there, exceedingly
unassuming pictures, which rendered neither pompous dramatic
scenes nor amusing pranks, but simple and unpretentious sub-
jects which had been directly observed. They represented
toiling humanity: shepherds, peasants, cobblers, women mending
nets, men stitching sails or binding wire. Or they represented
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GERMANY 499
people at their recreation in the beer-garden or in the enforced
inactivity of old age. And the persons thus painted carried
on no by-play with the public, as in earlier genre pictures ; on
the contrary they were absorbed in their occupation, and every-
thing suggestive of a relation between the model and the
artist, the figure and the spectator, was scrupulously eradicated
Moreover the inanimate, petrified element which vitiated the
productions of the realists was also avoided. The wind was
felt to be blowing strong around the figures ; and the beholder
not only saw peasants and blouses, but fancied that he could
breathe the very odour of the forest and the earth.
Just as at this time it was the aim of modern drama to
represent its personages, by all the resources in its power, as
under the sway of their physical and moral surroundings, their
real and habitual atmosphere, so atmospheric effect — air and
light— had now become the chief field of study in painting.
Here and there in the galleries of exhibitions . there emerged
little landscapes, the most unpretentious that could have been
painted : monotonous plains, poor flat lands, vegetable gardens
and weedy fields, and straight tulip-beds cut in broad stripes ;
and with great frequency the peculiarly iridescent bluish-red
tones of certain species of cabbage-heads were to be remarked.
As the figure-painters scorned to arouse an interest for art in
those who had no real feeling for it by making points and
painting anecdote, the landscape-painters disdained to stimulate
a topographical interest by representing the scenery beloved of
tourists, and were above creating the sentiment of landscape for
their pictures by false sentiment They devoted themselves to
nature with complete reverence, turning their eyes only to the
charm of atmosphere — the spiritual charm — which rests over quiet
and unmolested nooks. German painting had grown more ideal
and more elevated in taste since artists had given up working
frankly for the picture-buyer ; although it busied itself only with
toiling and heavily laden humanity, and with potato-fields or
cabbage-fields, it had become more exclusive and refined, for
now it touched only tones that were discreet and low, and had
no regard for those who did not care to listen to them.
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500 MODERN PAINTING
As a matter of fact, however, the battle that had to be
fought in Germany was almost severer than in France. Since
Oswald Achenbach and Eduard Griitzner the public had seen
so many views of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, and so
many humorous genre episodes, that it was almost impossible
to imagine simple regions and serious men after these showy
landscapes and laughing faces. In addition to this an uncom-
promising study of nature offended ^y^ which could only
tolerate her when trimmed and set in order. The fresh rendering
of personal impressions seemed brutal after that more glittering
painting which made a dexterous use of the articulation of form
and colour found in the old masters, adapting them for the
expression of its own aims. The effort to express the values
of tone with a renunciation of all narrative intention was looked
upon as want of spirit, because the interest in subject, even the
very rudest that has any relation to art, obstructed the growth
of the sense for absolute painting.
But the science of aesthetics — which had hitherto been almost
always obliged to take up a deprecatory attitude towards modem
art— had now occasion to follow the nature and history of the
opposition party with interest, and from the very first day.
For it had to establish that their programme attacked the
validity of those elements in the ascendant art by which it was
fundamentally distinguished from genuine old painting. The
new art aroused confidence because it no longer formed for
itself a style out of oUier styles, but, like every genuine form of
art, aimed at being the chronicle and mirror of its own age.
It aroused confidence because, after a prolonged period of
mongrel narrative art, it set forth a true style of painting, which
stood in need of no interesting title in a catalogue, but carried
in itself the justification of its own existence. And although
the roots of the new tree were embedded in France, it almost
seemed as if German painting, after so long deviating into
romantic lines, were about to begin once more, with modem
refinement of colour, at the point where Diirer and the "little
masters" had broken off. To those reviewing the past it was
as though a bridge had been cast from the present to that old
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501
Graphischt Kiinstt,} [ Uhdt pxt.
Max Liebermann.
art of the Germans, Dutch, and
English which in the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth cen-
turies pressed ever onwards,
opposing Romantic Eclecticism.
The finest spirits occupied with
the science of aesthetics began
to champion the new ideas, after
having sceptically held aloof
from all modern art. And they
were joined by a large number
of the younger men. In 1888,
twenty years after Manet had
arranged that private exhibition
at Durand-Ruel's which was so
momentous in its results, the
*' New Art"— against which the
doors of the Art Union had been closed even in Munich — was
triumphantly established in the Crystal Palace, and at that time
I began my articles on the great International Exhibition with
the heading ^^ Max Liebermann''
He was the bearer of the Promethean fire that was kindled
in Barbizon, and the initiator of the movement in Germany
corresponding with that which had taken place in Fontainebleau.
Whilst others who had been before him in Barbizon received
no enduring impressions, Liebermann was the first to bring the
unvarnished programme of the new style to his native land, and
thus became one of those pioneers whose place is assured in the
history of art. When he appeared he fared as badly as the
French painters who had quickened his talent : he was decried
as an apostle of hideousness. But now it is a different matter,
arid his works show that he has not altered himself, but has
made a change in us. He went a step further than Menzel in
adopting a style of simplicity, and endeavouring to lose himself
in nature where Menzel had been content to hover over the
surface of things in his brilliant way. And he went a step
further than Leibl in no longer regarding it as the highest aim
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MODERN PAINTING
Craphische KiiHsie.]
LlEBERMANN :
[Halm sc.
"The Cobbler's Shop."
of art to paint pic-
tures which should
be a wide and
broad